Never Look Away

Never Look Away () is a 2018 German coming-of-age romantic drama film written and directed by Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck. It was nominated for a Golden Lion at the 75th Venice International Film Festival and for a Golden Globe by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association. It was nominated for two Academy Awards at the 91st Academy Awards in the Best Foreign Language Film and Best Cinematography categories. This was only the second time that a German-language film by a German director was nominated for an Oscar in multiple categories, the other film being Wolfgang Petersen's "Das Boot" 36 years prior.
Plot.
As a child during the Nazi era, Kurt Barnert (inspired by Gerhard Richter) visits the exhibition "Entartete Kunst" ("Degenerate Art") in Dresden with his beautiful young aunt Elisabeth (Saskia Rosendahl). While there, Kurt is mesmerized by the "Girl with Blue Hair", a modernist sculpture by Eugen Hoffmann. Later at home, Kurt walks in on Elisabeth playing the piano in the nude. She rambles euphorically, saying she is "playing a concert for Hitler" and hits herself on the head with a glass ashtray. She also tells Kurt to "never look away" because "everything that is true holds beauty in it".
Aunt Elisabeth is diagnosed with schizophrenia and is sterilized and murdered under the Nazi euthanasia program. The doctor who orders her sterilization and death is gynaecologist Professor Carl Seeband, a high-ranking member of the SS medical corps. After the war, he is arrested by the Russians and briefly placed in a prison camp. While there, he volunteers to assist a Red Army officer's wife during a complicated birth and saves the lives of both wife and child. The grateful Russian officer thereafter protects Seeband and releases him, but still suspecting him.
As an adult, Kurt studies painting at the Dresden Academy of Fine Arts where he falls in love with a young fashion design student Elisabeth. She is the daughter of Professor Seeband, though all three of them are unaware of their shared history and connection.
Kurt excels in his studies, but is forced to complete paintings that reflect socialist realism, an ideology and school of art with which he does not identify with. Eventually, he meets Elisabeth's father, who has left his Nazi past behind and now follows the socialist ideology of East Germany. Seeband does not approve of his daughter's relationship with Kurt, whom he sees as poor and genetically inferior. He goes to great lengths to sabotage the relationship, even forcing Elisabeth to have an abortion when she falls pregnant with Kurt's child. However, the young couple's love strengthens and eventually the two get married.
Fearing prosecution after the Russian officer who protected him is transferred to Moscow, Seeband flees East Germany for West Germany. Shortly afterwards, Kurt and Elisabeth also flee to West Germany.
Since Kurt is already 30 years old, he lies about his age to be admitted to the famous Düsseldorf Art Academy. He is able to study and practise art more freely than in East Germany. His teacher, Professor Antonius van Verten (based on Joseph Beuys) recognizes Kurt's deep personal experience, but also sees that he is struggling to find his own voice, having been trained only in figurative painting, a medium considered outdated and "bourgeois" by the standards of the school. Kurt shares adjoining studio space with fellow student and confidant Harry Preusser (inspired by Günther Uecker), who experiments with hammering nails into boards to produce large artworks.
Only when Kurt finds a newspaper article about a captured Nazi doctor, Seeband's boss, does he have his artistic breakthrough. He starts using his figurative painting skills to copy black-and-white photographs onto the canvas, adding a mysterious sfumato blur. He also paints Seeband's passport photographs and photographs of his aunt from his own family album. When Seeband sees a collage painting of Kurt's aunt, the Nazi doctor, and himself, he flees in a panic, believing his son-in-law has uncovered his secret. Kurt remains unaware of the their connection.
After years of infertility, Elisabeth becomes pregnant, and Kurt celebrates the moment she told him by painting her nude. Kurt gets his first art show where his art impresses the critics even though they completely misunderstand and misinterpret it. He rejoices in finally finding his voice and his place in the world.
Historical background.
Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck explained extensively that "Never Look Away" is a work of fiction but that the point of inspiration had been an article by famed German investigative reporter Jürgen Schreiber about the German painter Gerhard Richter. Richter's aunt had been murdered by the Nazis because she developed schizophrenia. Richter immortalized her in a painting titled "Aunt Marianne" in which the aunt is holding Gerhard Richter as a baby. This painting was originally released under the title "Mother and Child" because it was Richter's habit to obfuscate the connections his paintings had to his personal life. This led art historians to refer to his body of work as being "without author", as it purportedly had no connection to its author's life.
What Jürgen Schreiber's investigative research uncovered in 2002 was that Gerhard Richter's father-in-law, , had been a high-ranking SS-doctor and fervent Nazi who himself performed over 900 forced sterilisations on women whom the Nazis considered unfit to reproduce. While he did not perform the operation on Marianne Schönfelder personally, he was the director of the hospital where it was performed.
Even though Gerhard Richter only found out about this connection between the families through the article at age 70, his body of work shows that – at least on a subconscious level – he must have known. One of his earliest paintings is of the arrest of Eufinger's SS boss, Werner Heyde, from a newspaper photograph. Another one from the same series, "Family at the Seaside", is a snapshot from his wife's photo album showing her father, Professor Eufinger, horse-playing with his family, a photograph that is unremarkable except for the fact that it was taken around the exact time professor Eufinger sent Richter's aunt to her death.
Finally, the largest photo painting that Gerhard Richter produced before turning to abstract art was "Ema, Nude on a Staircase" (#134 in his official catalogue raisoné). Ema, short for "Marianne", was Gerhard Richter's wife and also shared her first name with Richter's aunt. Unusually for Gerhard Richter, this painting is dated very precisely to May 1966. Richter's first child was born on 30 December 1966, and Richter explained that this photograph was staged by him when he had found out that she was three months pregnant. In a "New Yorker" profile of writer/director Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, who spent many weeks with Gerhard Richter during his research for the film but never revealed anything about the content of these conversations, Gerhard Richter revealed surprisingly that "Ema's father had been her gynecologist, and that there were mysteries and rumors around the treatment that he provided her".
Richter claimed that he told Donnersmarck that he did not want the movie character to bear his name. He also claims he suggested to Donnersmarck the film's protagonist might have another profession. Donnersmarck read Richter the full screenplay when he was finished, so that Richter could see for himself how much was fiction and where facts from his life were used. But when the film was finished and Donnersmarck offered to arrange a screening, Richter said that he did not feel up to it and did not feel he had the strength to see the film. Donnersmarck stated that he understood this reaction, as few people would want to relive some version of the most traumatic chapters of their life on screen. He said that it would probably be hurtful if it was too close to the facts and perhaps even more hurtful if it was not close enough. "Maybe the film is for everybody except him".
When asked for a comment by the German press, Richter said he had not seen the film but he found the trailer too "reißerisch", or thriller-like. Commenting on the material he had supplied to Donnersmarck in interviews, Richter told "The New Yorker": "I gave him something in writing stating that he was explicitly not allowed to use or publish either my name or any of my paintings. He reassured me to respect my wishes. But in reality, he has done everything to link my name to his movie, and the press was helping him to the best of its ability. Fortunately, the most important newspapers here reviewed his concoction very skeptically and critically. Nevertheless, he managed to abuse and grossly distort my biography!"
Reception.
Audience reaction.
At its very first screening, in Competition at the 75th Venice International Film Festival, "Never Look Away" received a 13-minute standing ovation and came in first place. "Never Look Away" also won audience awards at various festivals, mostly in competition with the same films it was up against in Venice.
Professional reaction.
The "San Francisco Chronicle" quotes "The Exorcist" director William Friedkin stating: "One of the finest films I have ever seen is "Never Look Away" – a masterpiece." In an interview with Mingle Media, "The Squid and the Whale" producer and feminist critic site Cherrypicks founder Miranda Bailey called "Never Look Away" "the best movie I've ever seen, in my entire life – "ever" – in my "whole life"."
Critical reaction.
"Never Look Away" holds a 77% fresh rating on review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, with an average rating of 7.39/10 based on 137 reviews; the critics consensus states: ""Never Look Away" fills its protracted running time with the absorbing story of an incredible life - and its impact on the singular artist who lived it." On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 68 out of 100, based on 28 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".
Ann Hornaday writing in "The Washington Post" wrote: "The title of "Never Look Away" is deliciously ironic: This is one of the most mesmerizing, compulsively watchable films in theaters right now." Leonard Maltin who taught the film at his master class at USC Film School writes: "I urge you to see "Never Look Away." It is a rich and rewarding experience, and the three hours fly by." In "Commentary" magazine, in an article called "The Greatness of Never Look Away – Triumphant", editor-in-chief John Podhoretz, compares "Never Look Away" favorably to David Lean's "Doctor Zhivago" and calls it "the rare movie you actually wish were longer because it is so involving, heart-wrenching, and beautiful." The novelist Kyle Smith, critic-at-large for the "National Review", writes in an article titled "A New Cinematic Masterpiece": "The German director Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck already has one of the best films of the century to his credit: 2007’s "The Lives of Others". His new one is, I think, even better. It may be the best German film I’ve ever seen. "Never Look Away" is the title." He goes on to state: "It's about the biggest themes (art, war, love, death), it's emotionally overwhelming, its dialogue is lapidary, its musical score transporting. It's one of the best films of the decade."
Dissenting voices include contrarian critic Armand White for the "National Review" and David Edelstein, writing for "New York" magazine's Vulture.com website. Boyd van Hoeij wrote in "The Hollywood Reporter" that "the work's considerations of the intimate connection among being, art and life finally feel quite superficial."
Box office.
"Never Look Away" reached a lifetime gross of US$1,303,747 and became the 15th German-language feature film to pass the million-dollar box-office mark.