MARCH 6, 2019
Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck is an interesting guy. As one of Germany’s leading filmmakers with a highfalutin’ name to boot, you might expect von Donnersmarck to speak like a count. Instead, when he opens his mouth, it’s pure Brooklyn. (He was raised in the U.S. as a child.) And it’s that contradiction as far as who he really is that carries over to his films, and that’s what makes them so fascinating.
Not that there’s very many of them.
Right out of the gate, his first feature film, 2006’s “The Lives of Others,” upset the heavy favorite, Guillermo del Toro’s “Pan’s Labyrinth.” to win the Academy Award as the year’s Best Foreign-Language Film. The film, a period piece focusing on how the GDR’s secret police, the Stasi, spied on East German citizens in the 1980s, might sound dry on paper, but in von Donnersmarck’s hands, it was a vibrant portrait of the times brought to life by focusing on the lives of those on both sides of the hidden microphones.
After a disastrous foray into Hollywood filmmaking with the 2010 Johnny Depp/Angelina Jolie stinker “The Tourist,” a film so bad that one might have wondered if he would ever make a movie again, von Donnersmarck is back on track, reappearing with the epic “Never Look Away,” which garnered an Academy Award nomination as Best Foreign-Language film and a surprise Oscar nod for the film’s legendary cinematographer Caleb Deschanel.
“Never Look Away” is very loosely based on the life of contemporary artist Gerhard Richter, though not loosely enough for Richter who apparently hates the film even though he has yet to see it. In “Never Look Away,” the artist character in question is named Kurt Barnert (Tom Schilling), who, while studying in Düsseldorf, develops his distinctive style of painting that brings him worldwide fame in the 1960s and ’70s. Instead of taking the approach of such biopics as “Lincoln,” in which the life of a man was told through one narrow period of time, von Donnersmarck opens up the artist’s life to an almost-epic scale being a witness to huge events, both historical and artistic.
Growing up in Dresden, young Kurt develops a love for art when, at the age of five, he is taken to an exhibition of “degenerate art” by his Aunt Elisabeth (Saskia Rosendahl) who urges him to never look away because everything that is true holds beauty in it. She repeats her advice as she is being dragged away by the Nazis who believe that she is schizophrenic and who, deeming her inferior, summarily execute her under the orders of SS member Prof. Karl Seeband (Sebastian Koch).
Following World War II, Kurt follows his dream and attends Dresden Art School where he meets and falls for Elizabeth (Paula Beer), a fellow student whose dreams dovetail with Kurt’s. His love for Elizabeth is the only joy for Kurt in a school that deems that art must reflect the principles of the state — in this case, Communism. It is at that moment that Kurt realizes that he and Elizabeth must get to the West in order to ensure that they can have both their personal and artistic freedom.
Von Donnersmarck is not afraid to take on the big themes — the fall of Nazism, the rise of Communism, the role of contemporary art in the global culture, etc. But he throws in a romance and a twist — not a spoiler because it is revealed early on that Elizabeth’s last name is Seeband, and she is the daughter of the SS officer who ordered the killing of Kurt’s aunt. Complications ensue.
The performances in “Never Look Away” are strong across the board, but the real star of the film is the ravishing cinematography of Caleb Deschanel, for whom “Never Look Away” marks his sixth Oscar nomination. It’s not just in the big set pieces such as the bombing of Dresden that Deschanel’s work shines but also in the overall painterly look in his palette and his framing in the more intimate scenes. It’s such an appropriate take in a film about art.
With the exception of the 2010 Johnny Depp/Angelina Jolie starring “The Tourist,” von Donnersmarck’s unfortunate detour into Hollywood studio filmmaking (the less about which is said the better), his short filmography reveals that he is a writer/director who is deliberate and not afraid of taking his time (much like “Never Look Away”). Could the film have been shorter? Of course. But watching “Never Look Away” is like settling in with a lengthy novel that, despite meandering now and then, turns out to be a very satisfying read. Or in this case, a very satisfying film.
GRADE: B+
