Nev­er Look Away

Back in 2006, Ger­many sub­mit­ted the debut fea­ture by one Flo­ri­an Maria Georg Chris­t­ian Graf Henck­el von Don­ners­mar­ck as their offi­cial entry for the for­eign lan­guage Oscar. The Lives of Oth­ers took home the gold, appear­ing on count­less end of year lists despite a back­lash that called into ques­tion its revi­sion­ist take on post­war Ger­man history.

It seemed that some cul­tur­al com­men­ta­tors took umbrage at its hith­er­to undoc­u­ment­ed notion of a Stasi oper­a­tive suf­fer­ing a cri­sis of con­science and betray­ing his duties. The film was, how­ev­er, a well-oiled nar­ra­tive machine, which is more than can be said for the director’s 2010 fol­low-up project, an explic­it­ly vain and bizarre exer­cise in star-fuck­ing, The Tourist.

Almost a decade has passed since the Jolie-Depp fias­co, and von Don­ners­mar­ck appears keen to return to the sanc­tu­ary of his ear­li­er suc­cess; revis­it­ing 20^th Cen­tu­ry Ger­man his­to­ry with exact­ly the right lev­el of clas­si­cal ven­tril­o­quism to woo the Academy’s Free­dom Pass brigade. The move paid off, net­ting a pair of large­ly unex­pect­ed nom­i­na­tions for Best For­eign Lan­guage Film and the warm­ing glow of Caleb Deschanel’s cinematography.

But is von Don­ners­mar­ck sim­ply up to his old tricks again? The direc­tor has been keen to point out that Nev­er Look Away is based on the life of Ger­hard Richter, one of Germany’s most impor­tant liv­ing artists. The famous­ly reclu­sive Richter has since dis­tanced him­self from the film, claim­ing it bears lit­tle rela­tion to the account of his life giv­en to the film­mak­er across hours of prepara­to­ry inter­views. Von Don­ners­mar­ck seem­ing­ly promised a fic­tion­alised account, then went out of his way to tie the artist to the project.

What­ev­er the truth of the mat­ter, it’s worth men­tion­ing most­ly in as far as Nev­er Look Away itself deals with ques­tions of rep­re­sen­ta­tion. Span­ning some 30 years of Ger­man his­to­ry across three hours, the film opens with the infa­mous Degen­er­ate Art exhi­bi­tion, held by the Nazi Par­ty in Munich in 1937. The date here is fudged – a minor detail, per­haps, but one that serves to illu­mi­nate von Donnersmarck’s casu­al approach to his­tor­i­cal verac­i­ty when it threat­ens his larg­er the­mat­ic or dra­mat­ic schemes. Iron­ic, giv­en the repeat­ed line that serves to under­score the protagonist’s quest for mean­ing in his art: ​“Every­thing true is beautiful.”

As far as the film’s dra­mat­ic con­cerns go, the epic sweep of his­to­ry can’t paper the cracks of its var­i­ous melo­dra­mat­ic vices. Coin­ci­dences abound in what is a bland­ly hand­some por­trait of the artist as a young man, and it all stems from one of the most rep­re­hen­si­ble gas cham­ber sequences ever com­mit­ted to film. Claude Lanz­mann, direc­tor of sem­i­nal Holo­caust doc­u­men­tary Shoah, is like­ly spin­ning in his grave.

The final stretch, as Tom Schilling’s Richter-proxy finds his artis­tic voice, deems to essay the notion that the pain of a nation’s col­lec­tive his­to­ry can be, if not healed, then at least con­front­ed through artis­tic rep­re­sen­ta­tion. ​“Nev­er look away,” we’re told for the umpteenth time. But with von Don­ners­mar­ck serv­ing as a dubi­ous Vir­gil through the cir­cles of 20^th cen­tu­ry his­to­ry, you’re bet­ter off just look­ing elsewhere.