Film by Gero von Boehm: Sensationally good Lagerfeld document

If someone understands the craft – or better the art – of the documentary and celebrity portrait, then it is probably Gero von Boehm. In a small but fine film, the 71-year-old now gets to the bottom of the man, myth and fashion designer Karl Lagerfeld (1933-2019).

“Karl – The man behind the mask” (60 minutes) can be seen on Saturday (May 24th) at the best broadcast time (8:15 p.m.) at 3SAT – and also in the media library.

The filmmaker was able to win all kinds of prominent voices for the documentary, including the US “Vogue” editor Anna Wintour, Model and Muse Nadja Auermann, the actor and “Becoming Karl Lagerfeld” actor Daniel Brühl, designer colleague Wolfgang Joop and the FAZ journalist and biographer Alfons Kaiser (“Karl Lagerfeld-a German in Paris”).

“Karl was like my magical fairy dust and my mentor,” says Claudia Schiffer, who was considered his favorite man sequin for years. “He turned me into the supermodel from the shy German girl.”

Sébastian Jondeau, closest confidant in the last years of life, gives an insight into the hours before Lagerfeld’s death in February 2019. He also says that something very specific should happen with the ashes at the request of the designer – and why there is neither gravestone nor memorial.

Many small stories about the early Parisian years result in an exciting picture of the man who almost perfectly knew how to put himself in scene, but talked a lot, but hardly said anything (at least nothing private). He is not a generation, not a milieu, fits everywhere, claimed camp field of himself.

There are anecdotes from the youth friend Peter Bermbach, as Karl Lagerfeld as a young German in Paris in the 1950s in close swimming pools in the swimming pool, or his Mercedes convertible liked to park in the Saint-Germain-Des-Prés district in front of the “Café de Flore” or the “Deux Magots” to be seen.

In a fashion competition in the mid-1950s, he won the first prize for a coat design, but the more important award for the best dress went to the 18-year-old Yves Saint Laurent, who always remained a kind of rival in the following decades.

Much later, Lagerfeld was the first big name from the world of skin couture, which worked with a fast fashion brand like H&M.

The documentary and psychologized are also made in the documentary, but well -founded. So Lagerfeld was probably ashamed of his year of birth that was associated with the Nazi matters, which he liked to go silently or changed.

As a young man, he is also said to have invented lying stories from a Swedish baron.

The fact that his entrepreneurship both were once in the NSDAP did not go well with the resume of a man of the world who wanted to start internationally and especially to be accepted in his adopted home in France.

His only great love, Dandy Jacques de Bascher, died of AIDS at the age of 38. Caroline Lebar, Karl’s head of communication, reveals that Lagerfeld had to deal with the hated topics of illness and decay at that time that he spent the last few days with basement and then continued to continue working in a highly disciplined manner, for example when rehearsing.

The documentary also has original quotes for this dark chapter: Of course he took care of his friend at the time, he was not freezing cold, says Lagerfeld. “The better you live with yourself, the better you can take care of others.” Back then, Lagerfeld also went out from grief and grief in the following years, say confidants.

At the turn of the millennium, Lagerfeld reinvented itself again. He changed his appearance, took 42 kilograms in 13 months, also to fit into the narrow -cut clothes of the designer Hedi Slimane.

Lagerfeld made itself more and more of their own brand – and finally became the world star, which many young people can still remember today.

Finally, prostate cancer suffered him. Lagerfeld almost died in 2015, but the Hamburg -born ignored the disease, as long as it was. Work, work, work – that was his life.

He didn’t want to accept death. “I don’t want to be seen either when I’m dead, I find terrible – cloth over it and away. In the trash can. From.”