Werner Herzog is a purveyor of impossible dreams. He fixates on quixotic characters, whose ambitions—and their pitfalls—become the subject of his inimitable films. It would seem only natural, then, that Herzog would eventually pull one of the twentieth century's greatest tragic heroes into his orbit. But Mikhail Gorbachev, Herzog's latest documentary subject and the octogenarian former president of the Soviet Union, upends the Herzogian model. Meeting Gorbachev is, unapologetically, a hagiography. Herzog fare deals in the absurd, using dark humor to expose deeper truths than facts alone could relate. There are traces of these moments in the film—for instance, a regional newscast that only mentions the fall of the Iron Curtain as an afterthought, and instead focuses the main evening news story on slugs—but for the most part, what the director serves up instead of absurdity is genuine affection.
