Review of Meine Schwester Maria

The award-winning "Meine Schwester Maria" or "My Sister Maria" is a 1.5-hour documentary movie from 2002, so this one has its 15th anniversary this year. The director is Oscar winner Maximilian Schell and here he gives us an insight into the life of his older sister Maria, not an Oscar winner, but still a huge star and we find out about her glory days, but also about her life as an old woman suffering from dementia. I would say overall it was competently executed here I guess. You get a good insight most of the time, sometimes even a great one. Still it felt to me to be honest as if the documentary was good, but nowhere near as good as it could have been. This has to do with strange, almost pointless, supporting players here and forgettable plots you could almost say that cost the film quite a bit in the authenticity department. I personally believe that Max Schell would have had a great deal more and more interesting anecdotes to tell about his sister that certainly also would not have been too personal and could have turned the film into something truly special. So it is a success, but not a great success I would say. But maybe you also need to be a bigger Maria Schell fan than I am to really get the love in these 90 minutes. I like her, but I would not say she is anywhere near my personal favorites. That description actually would fit better when it comes to describing how I see Max Schell. Shame there is nobody out the to make a similar documentary about the late actor sadly, he was truly tremendous during his peak. But back to this one here, I think there are some flaws with the execution and concept in terms of the approach and general idea overall, but also many good moments and I believe the positive in here is more frequent than the negative. Go check it out.