![]() |
Tom Schilling excels in this shadowy Gerhard Richter biography Never Look Away |
Director: Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck
Cast: Tom Schilling (Kurt Barnet), Sebastian Koch (Professor
Carl Seeband), Paula Beer (Ellie Seeband), Saskia Rosendahl (Elisabeth May),
Oliver Masucci (Professor Antonius van Verten), Ina Weisse (Martha Seeband),
Rainer Bock (Dr Burghart Kroll), Hanno Koffler (Gunther Presueer)
In 2006 The Lives of
Others propelled Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck to the fore-front of the
European Arts Film circle. His follow-up, the Depp/Jolie starrer The Tourist was a disaster that sent him
spiralling back. Now von Donnersmarck returns to German cinema – and the
travails and divides of a country split for a large chunk of the 20th
century into East and West – with Never
Look Away a film heavily inspired by the life and work of famed German
artist Gerhard Richter, with splashes of German history and it’s difficult
relationship with both fascism and socialism.
Kurt Barnett is an artist growing up in Nazi Germany, living
outside Dresden after his father lost his teaching job due to his reluctance to
join the party. Barnett’s family is hit hard during the way – his two young
uncles are killed, Dresden (and everyone he knows) is destroyed. Worst of all
his inspirational artistic sister Elisabeth (Saskia Rosendahl) is diagnosed
with schizophrenia and is quietly killed during the Nazi programme of removing
“unsuitable elements” from German society. That decision is taken by Professor
Carl Seeband (Sebastian Koch), a natural survivor and amoral egotist who later
makes the adjustment smoothly to living in the Socialist East. Barnett (played
by Tom Schilling as a young man) meanwhile goes to East German art school,
falling in love with a fashion student Ellie (Paula Beer), but struggling to
find his own voice in an East Germany where all art must serve a social
purpose. Will escape to the West bring freedom of thought?
Never Look Away is
a mantra in the film, in an epic quasi-biography that explores the dark
underbelly of German history, filtering the countries struggles to find some
sort of freedom through the world of Art. It also has an unflinching eye for
the losses and horrors of Nazi Germany, with the film never turning away from
the brutal impact of the bombings of Dresden, the death of Kurt’s uncles on the
Eastern front and (toughest of all) the shuffling of his tragic aunt into a gas
chamber.
But the film also works so well as a commentary on the
silent repression Germany has suffered throughout the twentieth century, from
the fear of stepping out of line with a contrary opinion in Nazi Germany, to
the repression of individualist thought under Communist East Germany. “Never
Look Away” are the last words Elisabeth speaks to Kurt – and it’s what fuels
his eventual move towards Art that comments on reality with its blurred
reproductions of personal snapshots and images (see Gerard Richter’s art).
Von Donnersmarck uses art as a neat commentary for these
ideas by showing how, in each era of Germany, the comments and views of art
reflect each other. The film opens with the young Kurt and Elisabeth taking a
tour around a Nazi “Degenerate Art” exhibition in Dresden, which suggests the
likes of Picasso and Dali are either insane, moral degenerates, perverts or all
three for their failure to create art that properly reflects nature. Later at
the East German art school, the same artists are denounced again for failing to
carry a proper and correct social message in their work. The tables are turned
in the free Germany of the 1960s, where Modern exhibitionist art is all the
rage, and paint and canvas is so passe
as to be almost vulgar. Three different political spectrums, three very
different dictates from society about what constitutes art.
How’s a man to find himself, and his personal expression as
an artist, in the middle of this? Kurt is a gifted painter and drawer, but in
every era his work is moved towards what is expected of him. As a boy in
Germany he hides his impressionist sketches. In East Germany he becomes a
famous painter of socialist images and murals. In the art college he tries to
shift his style into the experimental alleyways of his peers – work that his
professor (played with a neat mixture of pretension and earnestness by Oliver
Masucci) recognises his not his true voice. It takes putting his own spin on
images and memories of the past – of careful reproductions than subtly blurred
to reflect our own imperfect memories (a visual trick von Donnersmarck prepares
us for throughout the film with Barnett watching things move in and out of focus
as they happen before him) works perfectly.
The film throws together this mix of art and German history
with a thick streak of melodrama, which should be ridiculous but basically
seems to work. Contrivance and coincidence bring together the fates of Barnett
and Professor Seeband, the man responsible for the death of his aunt, and
bounds their lives together forever. It’s a narrative development that could
make you groan, but somehow the film gets away with it. It probably mostly
works because Sebastian Koch is excellent as Seebold, even if the man is so
base, selfish, lacking in shame and principle and coldly, uncaringly ruthless
that he feels at time almost like a cartoon. No deed of greed and bastardy is
beneath him, and the score frequently underlines his villiany with a series of
unsubtle cues.
But it works because Koch’s Seebold is also a marvellous
commentary on the flexibility of so many in Germany. Seamlessly he turns
himself from proud SS sterilisation and termination doctor, into proud East German
Socialist leader and finally into centre-piece of West German society as a
leading surgeon. Just as art is bent and shifted, so Seebold represents how
people will allow their lives and principles to adapt and shift with all the
rest. It’s worth a bit of melodrama and some plot twists that lean on the
unbelievable (and are based far less on reality than most of Richter’s life).
But the sections that focus on Barnet/Richter are just as
fine, and von Donnersmarck brings energy, excitement and joy to the act of art
creation in the way few other film makers have done. Tom Schilling continues
his excellent run of roles, as a passionate free-thinker, yearning to have the
chance to find his own voice and Paula Beer is just as good as his wife, whose
artistic soul is just as strong, even if she does get a (albeit moving)
can-I-have-babies plotline. The relationship between these two is striking for
its loving affection and genuine warmth. And it gives the film a real heart.
Never Look Away
isn’t perfect, but in its marvellous expression of the joys of artistic
creation and the way that art is bent and used for the needs of government and
society, it has a lot to say. With excellent performances across the board –
Schilling, Koch and Beer are fabulous – it is also a fascinating commentary on
the schizophrenic nature of Germany itself throughout much of the twentieth
century. Melodramatic and obvious at times – and even I will say overlong at
nearly three hours – a thudding mix at times of points made with too much force,
it’s also a marvellous exploration of art and artists. Von Donnersmarck is
back.