Summary:
This biopic-tribute to the German plastic artist Gerhard Richter suffers from various vices that the genre usually incurs, ranging from schematic to pretentiousness, in a story that seeks to assemble personal history, historical-political contexts and artistic training with a result rather scattered. In any case, it is always useful and necessary for a film to return to the atrocities of Nazism (in this case its euthanasia policies) and also to the paths of impunity for its criminals.
Review:
The film follows the personal and artistic life of a painter, Kurt Barnert, from his childhood in Dresden in 1937, through almost three decades of German history.
Actually, this film by Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck is a biopic-tribute to the important German plastic artist Gerhard Richter and exposes various circumstances of his life and their relationship with his artistic training.
Not coincidentally, the film opens with a visit by Kurt as a child with his aunt Elisabeth to the Exhibition of Degenerate Art (Entartete Kunst) in Dresden in 1937, where the guide played by Lars Eidinger (Babylon Berlin, Irma Vep) minutely enumerates the characteristics "degenerate" of those works cataloged like this by Nazism.
Sooner rather than later, the film addresses the issue of the Nazi regime's criminal euthanasia policies on the disabled and the mentally ill, focusing on gynecologist Carl Seeband (Sebastian Koch) and the tremendous Allied bombing of Dresden, a city that would remain within of what will be East Germany. Therefore, Von Donnersmarck will show us the artistic training of the young Kurt according to the precepts of "socialist realism", establishing a somewhat obvious parallelism with the beginning of the film. At the same time, Kurt's romance with another Elisabeth (Paula Beer, the great actress from Undine) develops and we will see that elements of the Nazi past will continue to be present in the life of the young man (Tom Schilling).
It always arouses curiosity to see how a German director tackles Nazism or socialism in East Germany (Von Donnersmarck had already done the latter in The Lives of Others). But Never Look Away (an ambitious 3-hour film) suffers from certain flaws that biopics tend to incur, particularly those of artists. The typical topics appear: the original trauma and the influence on the work, the relationship between art and artistic training with politics and ideology and between private life and ideology, the search for one's own artistic language (so difficult to describe in a film) and an atmosphere of freedom to develop it and the inevitable epiphanic moment. At this point, the original German title (Werke ohne Author, work without an author), is the one that works best as a synthesis of his artistic ideas.
But all these elements are exposed and combined with a certain schematic and sometimes pretentiousness; but the result is scattered, it does not look fully integrated. Max Richter's pounding soundtrack repeats ad nauseam a 3-note leitmotif in an attempt to infuse some scenes with grandeur, but ironically, the best (and certainly beautiful) musical moments of the film are those that use fragments of Handel and Purcell. And it's a shame that Beer's character is losing relevance as the film progresses, with all that that implies.
In any case, it is always useful for a film to return to the atrocities of Nazism and also to the paths of impunity.
This biopic-tribute to the German plastic artist Gerhard Richter suffers from various vices that the genre usually incurs, ranging from schematic to pretentiousness, in a story that seeks to assemble personal history, historical-political contexts and artistic training with a result rather scattered. In any case, it is always useful and necessary for a film to return to the atrocities of Nazism (in this case its euthanasia policies) and also to the paths of impunity for its criminals.
Review:
The film follows the personal and artistic life of a painter, Kurt Barnert, from his childhood in Dresden in 1937, through almost three decades of German history.
Actually, this film by Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck is a biopic-tribute to the important German plastic artist Gerhard Richter and exposes various circumstances of his life and their relationship with his artistic training.
Not coincidentally, the film opens with a visit by Kurt as a child with his aunt Elisabeth to the Exhibition of Degenerate Art (Entartete Kunst) in Dresden in 1937, where the guide played by Lars Eidinger (Babylon Berlin, Irma Vep) minutely enumerates the characteristics "degenerate" of those works cataloged like this by Nazism.
Sooner rather than later, the film addresses the issue of the Nazi regime's criminal euthanasia policies on the disabled and the mentally ill, focusing on gynecologist Carl Seeband (Sebastian Koch) and the tremendous Allied bombing of Dresden, a city that would remain within of what will be East Germany. Therefore, Von Donnersmarck will show us the artistic training of the young Kurt according to the precepts of "socialist realism", establishing a somewhat obvious parallelism with the beginning of the film. At the same time, Kurt's romance with another Elisabeth (Paula Beer, the great actress from Undine) develops and we will see that elements of the Nazi past will continue to be present in the life of the young man (Tom Schilling).
It always arouses curiosity to see how a German director tackles Nazism or socialism in East Germany (Von Donnersmarck had already done the latter in The Lives of Others). But Never Look Away (an ambitious 3-hour film) suffers from certain flaws that biopics tend to incur, particularly those of artists. The typical topics appear: the original trauma and the influence on the work, the relationship between art and artistic training with politics and ideology and between private life and ideology, the search for one's own artistic language (so difficult to describe in a film) and an atmosphere of freedom to develop it and the inevitable epiphanic moment. At this point, the original German title (Werke ohne Author, work without an author), is the one that works best as a synthesis of his artistic ideas.
But all these elements are exposed and combined with a certain schematic and sometimes pretentiousness; but the result is scattered, it does not look fully integrated. Max Richter's pounding soundtrack repeats ad nauseam a 3-note leitmotif in an attempt to infuse some scenes with grandeur, but ironically, the best (and certainly beautiful) musical moments of the film are those that use fragments of Handel and Purcell. And it's a shame that Beer's character is losing relevance as the film progresses, with all that that implies.
In any case, it is always useful for a film to return to the atrocities of Nazism and also to the paths of impunity.