NEVER LOOK AWAY – Review

Oliver Masucci as Professor Antonius van Verten, in NEVER LOOK AWAY. Photo by Caleb Deschanel, Courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics

Art and history meld in the Oscar-nominated NEVER LOOK AWAY, a German-language epic tale that begins in 1937 Nazi Germany, and follows Kurt, an artistically-gifted young German, from his boyhood under the Nazis, to life in communist East Germany, and finally in the West in the 1960s. The personal story is used to explore life in eastern Germany under two repressive regimes, and those regimes shifting views on modern art under those regimes. Naturally, the drama also touches on Nazi war crimes, the war itself and its aftermath under communism but the lens is this child’s experience in wartime and then as a young artist.

NEVER LOOK AWAY is an Oscar nominee in this year’s Foreign Language category and also in the Cinematography category, for Oscar-winner Caleb Deschanel’s stunningly lush work. The visual lushness is a must for a period film centered on art, but three-time Oscar winner Deschanel far exceeds expectations, creating one of the many elements that make this dramatic film so compelling to watch.

German director Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck also wrote and produced this excellent film. His feature film debut, 2006’s THE LIVES OF OTHERS, won the Foreign-Language Oscar. That drama also touched on the treatment of artists in communist East Germany. Sebastian Koch, who played a lead role in THE LIVES OF OTHERS, returns in this film, appearing as a Nazi doctor, Professor Seeband.

NEVER LOOK AWAY is as much art history as political history, and both form the backdrop for a absorbing personal saga. We first meet Kurt (Cai Cohrs) as a young boy in 1937 Germany, when he and his aunt Elizabeth (an amazing Saskia Rosendahl) are visiting a Nazi exhibit on “Degenerate Art.” While the tour guide descries the various “evils” of the modern art works on display and praises traditional art, Kurt and Elizabeth listen politely. Hanging back as the tour group moves to the next gallery, Elizabeth whispers to her nephew that she likes the “degenerate” art anyway. Elizabeth is Kurt’s mother’s teenage sister, and she is as wild and creative as she is beautiful. Kurt adores her and she encourages Kurt’s drawings, urging her nephew to “never look away” from anything in life.

The period drama has a truly epic scope, covering about 30 years, and a running time to match, at just over 3 hours. Yet the film does not feel long, never drags and keeps the audience engaged and even absorbed in its sweeping story. Love, art, tragedy, family and sweeping change all suffuse this outstanding film.

At first, the family, who live in an idyllic rural area near Dresden, think they have nothing to fear from the Nazis since they are “Aryans.” Kurt’s father, a teacher, finds Nazi ideas personally distasteful, yet he joins the Nazi party at his wife’s insistence, and her belief that it will advance his career. The rest of the family goes along as well, with the older boys in the Hitler Youth and then the army, and pretty blonde Elizabeth, the picture of the Nazi ideal, chosen to hand a bouquet to a Nazi leader visiting her school. Their expectations turn out to be tragically wrong, starting when Elizabeth’s behavior becomes unstable and she comes in contact with Nazi doctor Professor Seeband (Sebastian Koch).

Tom Schilling plays the teenage and then grown-up Kurt, as the drama follows him and his family through the sweeping changes of the war and its aftermath. Kurt does become an artist, a very gifted painter, through a circuitous path that takes us through the shifting landscape in post-war East Germany.

NEVER LOOK AWAY takes a different tack on history than audiences might expect, skipping some more familiar subjects usually covered in WWII set films. The epic is as much art history as political history, and all the history is more backdrop for this personal story. The drama picks and chooses historical details, based on aspects that touch the main character directly. The war and Nazis are depicted through the child Kurt’s experiences, thus it focuses on Nazi ideas about eugenics and extermination of those they deemed “defective” rather than the atrocities heaped on Jewish people. Rather than multiple battles, the film depicts the firebombing of Dresden, in a horrific, powerful sequence. After the war, the hunt is on for Nazis but party members in name only, like Kurt’s father, are as likely a target as real ones like Seeband.

On the art history side, we see Nazi repression of modern art replaced by the communists’ focus on only propaganda-laden Socialist Realism. Even in the non-communist West, the arbiters of artistic taste tell painter Kurt that “painting is dead” and he must embrace some other medium.

Still, the particular events in this life do play symbolic roles to highlight some aspects of the history, noticeable enough that it seems like more than mere chance is at work where some character story lines intersect. Donnersmarck does a masterful job blending the personal and the historic in this art-focused epic.

The acting is as outstanding as the powerful story and beautiful photography. Tom Schilling is superb as the young artist, effectively depicting him from a teen to an ambitious young man. The actor captures to struggle of the artist to express himself despite the strictures of the cultures he finds himself in, and the hunger to create.

Yet audiences might be as taken with the two young women in Kurt’s life. As star-crossed aunt Elizabeth, Saskia Rosendahl is hypnotic, radiating charisma and madness in an emotional, pivotal role. Paula Beers, who was so fabulous in FRANTZ, plays the young fashion designer Kurt meets at art school, a role she carries off with enormous charm.

Sebastian Koch as the doctor is a perfect villain, a fully-rounded person with the impulse to protect his family, but fully committed to the Nazis’ cold ideas. The complexity and intelligence of the character makes him all the more chilling, as he becomes entwined in Kurt’s life in ways neither expect. It is a relationship fraught with tension and secrets, some that neither realize until much later. The other cast are strong as well, with Oliver Masucci as art school teacher Antonius van Verten particularly effective.

It is best to approach this film without expectations built on its historical setting and just let it sweep you up in its flow. One of the year’s best, particularly for fans of art, NEVER rewards well those willing to make the effort to read subtitles and be patient with its epic length. It is well worth it.

NEVER LOOK AWAY opens Friday, February 15, at Landmark’s Plaza Frontenac Cinema.

RATING: 5 out of 5 stars