Movie Review: Never Look Away

Never Look Away **** / *****

Directed by: Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck.

Written by: Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck.

Starring: Tom Schilling (Kurt Barnert), Sebastian Koch (Professor Carl Seeband), Paula Beer (Ellie Seeband), Saskia Rosendahl (Elisabeth May), Oliver Masucci (Professor Antonius van Verten), Cai Cohrs (Kurt Barnert 6 Jahre), Ina Weisse (Martha Seeband), Evgeniy Sidikhin (NKWD Major Murawjow), Mark Zak (Dolmetscher Murawjow), Ulrike C. Tscharre (Frau Hellthaler), Bastian Trost (Hausarzt Dr. Franz Michaelis), Hans-Uwe Bauer (Professor Horst Grimma). 

 

At 188 minutes, Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck’s Never Look Away takes its time – as it must. The film focuses on a German artist named Kurt Barnert – loosely based on Gerard Richter – who came of age under Nazi rule and then had to live on Soviet Socialist rule until he finally escaped to the West at nearly the age of 30. The film is also about the relationship he had with the two most important women in his life – first, his fragile Aunt Elisabeth (Saskia Rosendahl) and then the beautiful fashion student Ellie (Paula Beer) – who he will marry. Not coincidentally, they share a name, and they look similar to each other. The film has some big themes, but Donnersmarck doesn’t beat you over the head with them. Like his great The Lives of Others, the film is about Germany in transition – here, from Nazi control to Soviet control, and then to more freedom. It is about how people can operate under these different ideologies – or cannot – how they can go from spouting Heil Hitler, to spouting socialist propaganda. And how ultimately both totalitarian regimes stifle artistic freedom – seeing that as dangerous.

 

The film opens with Aunt Elisabeth bringing young Kurt to an art exhibit of “degenerate art” – being put on by the Nazis. Modern art, which the sneering, condescending tour guide dismisses completely. It doesn’t celebrate German history, or its glorious future, so what is the point. Hitler had very definite ideas of what art should be, and in Germany at that time if you didn’t align with that idea, you didn’t produce art. It is the same when Kurt becomes an art student a decade later. He has undeniable talent; he becomes celebrated in East Germany as a great artist. But he has to paint in the same social realist style as everyone else. When you live with that kind of stricture, that oppression of your work, can you ever truly know who you are as an artist? When he finally gets out of Soviet control, and heads to West Germany, he enrolls at another art school. He is a painter, but is told by everyone there that painting is dead. They are doing all sort of strange, challenging modern art with all sorts of different mediums. And Kurt is blocked. He has no idea who he is as an artist, or what he wants to say.

 

Through this all is his relationship with Ellie, and his memories of Aunt Elisabeth. Aunt Elisabeth suffered from some sort of mental illness, and is taken away and institutionalized during the war – where she is sterilized. After that, she disappears into the camps. The film also follows her doctor – Carl Seeband (Sebastian Koch) – who willingly goes along with what the Nazis wanted, and then is protected when the Soviets take over. He’s one of those amoral psychopaths who always seems to land on his feet, because he doesn’t really have any ideology to hold onto (he shares the Nazis obsession with bloodlines, but that’s hardly it). The film is careful about how it portrays him – never in a good light – and yet, you wait for him to get his comeuppance, and doesn’t ever quite arrive. Even the good characters in the film, although they hate him, have to find a way to live with him – even live off of his money – for years. You understand that this is how it had to be in Germany after the war – not only making peace with the countries past and its sins, but the sins of the people you saw every day.

 

You can argue that Never Look Away is a little too long, that it both tries to do a little too much, but at the same time is a little too repetitive. You may be right. And yet, I cannot say that I felt that Never Look Away was too long, and honestly, the three-hour runtime didn’t feel that long either. The film is meticulously crafted Caleb Deschanel’s excellent cinematography, that shocked everyone by getting an Oscar nomination this year, really is wonderful. You do have to accept some pretty amazing coincidences in the storytelling to make the film work, but those coincidences are designed to get to a larger truth. For Donnersmarck, this is a return to form. The Lives of Others was made in 2006, and won the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar over the favorite Pan’s Labyrinth that year (I still think I would have voted for the Del Toro movie – but it’s close) and the only other film he’s made since was the very bad The Tourist with Johnny Depp and Angelina Jolie back in 2010. Here, he’s made a beautiful and thought provoking film, a disturbing one and one that continues to grow in your mind after seeing it. It’s not quite a great film like The Lives of Others was – but it’s a very good one, and hopefully means we won’t have to wait so long for another film from Donnersmarck.