Gerhard
Richter was a direct inspiration for Kurt Barnert, but there is a little bit of
Sigmar Polke in him, as well as every other East German artist who crossed over
to the West, for the sake of artistic freedom. Like Richter, Barnert is a
product of the Cold War era, but his art grapples with [East and West] Germany’s
dark legacy from WWII. However, in Barnert’s case, the crimes of the National
Socialist regime will hit home much closer than he initially expects in Florian
Henckel von Donnersmarck’s Never Look
Away (trailer
here),
Germany’s official foreign language Oscar submission, which opens a special
awards-qualifying run this Friday in New York.
As
a boy, Barnert dearly loved his free-spirited aunt, Elisabeth May. She had a
formative influence on him, encouraging his artistic talent and secretly assuring
him it was okay to like the notorious exhibition of supposedly “degenerate art.”
Alas, she was too free a spirit for her times. Her unconventional attitudes resulted
in her commitment to an insane asylum, where National Socialist hardliner Prof.
Carl Seeband would eventually euthanize her, along with the rest of his
patients.
Seeband
is a true believer in the Party’s racial theories, but he also respects power
and authority. He therefore is perfectly happy to switch his loyalties to
Communism, after saving the life of a top Soviet officer’s pregnant wife. As
the years go by, he becomes a pillar of the GDR regime, who is not about to let
his daughter marry a scruffy art student like Kurt Barnert. Inconveniently (for
Seeband), the two students are deeply in love and have the tacit approval of
his wife, but as an arrogant control freak, he has no problem employing genuinely
sinister psychological tactics to undermine their relationship. However, his
own past is always lurking out there and will eventually force the entire
family to slip over to the West.
Forget
Johnny Depp and The Tourist ever
existed. Never Look Away is an entirely
worthy follow-up to Donnersmarck’s masterful The Lives of Others, which is high praise indeed. Like his
Oscar-winning feature debut, NLA has
moments that are exquisitely elegant and also disturbingly chilling.
Donnersmarck is consciously engaging with his country’s ism-driven history as
well as the question of what it means to be German, but both films of his non-duology
very definitely explore the psychology of oppressors and those who willingly follow
them, as well.
NLA is also an
incredible depiction of the creation of art and an exploration of its
significance during the last Century. Painstaking effort went into recreating
the 1937 Degenerate Art Exhibition, including the reproduction of some
subsequently destroyed paintings that were only documented in small black-and-white
photographs. The way he stages Barnert’s great artistic breakthrough (modeled
on some of Richter’s early work) is highly cinematic—exhilarating is arguably
not too strong a word. As an added bonus, Max Richter’s minimalist but evocatively
melodic score might just be his best to-date. NLA runs a full three hours and change, but Donnersmarck so fully
commands our attention, it flies by like a hurtling bullet train.
Regardless
of Donnersmarck’s intent, many people will inevitably consider NLA and TLOO as part of a thematic set, due to the presence of Sebastian
Koch in both, albeit in vastly different roles. His portrayal of Prof. Seeband
is a staggering portrait of magisterial villainy and the psychological debasement
that results. Frankly, it is a performance on the level of Ralph Fiennes in Schindler’s List.
Tom
Schilling does not have anything remotely approaching Koch’s power and gravitas
(who does?), but he is completely convincing performing Barnert’s acts of artistic
creation, which are absolutely essential to the film. However, Saskia Rosendahl
(probably best known for the over-hyped Lore)
is the greatest revelation, also giving her career-best (so far) as the charismatic
but tragic Aunt Elisabeth.
There
is no need to parse words. Never Look
Away is just a great film. It is not as quite overwhelming as The Lives of Others, but its big moments
sneak up on viewers and suddenly pull the entire floor out from under their
feet. Honestly, it is amazing how close it comes to matching the level of
achievement Donnersmarck reached with his first feature.
This is important cinema, but it is also richly rewarding on an emotional
level. Very highly recommended, Never
Look Away opens this Friday (11/30) in New York, for a week-long
Oscar-qualifying week run (it will return early next year).
