Never Look Away

One of my favourite films of all time is "The Lives of Others", (2006). Written and directed by Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, it painted a heart-breaking picture of life in East Germany, where artists and activists were under constant clandestine surveillance. The film won an Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film.

Now von Donnersmarck has written and directed another film, "Never Look Away", that I would recommend to anyone who is interested in art. A caution: the film runs 3 hours and 9 minutes, and it's best to know that going in.

The film opens in 1937 when Kurt, the principal character, is 5 years old. He is visiting one of the touring exhibitions of "degenerate art", organized by the German government, with his adoring aunt, Elizabeth. Both of them are intrigued by a Kandinsky abstract. Elizabeth suffers from schizophrenia, and after a psychotic break is taken into state custody, sterilized, and ultimately murdered.

We follow Kurt as he grows up and enters art school. One of the threads of the film is a romance between Kurt and Ellie, also an art student, and another is the identity of Ellie's physician father.

But most of the second half is about Kurt's struggle to find "his voice" as an artist. Many details of Kurt's life and artistic path are borrowed from the biography of Gerhard Richter, though Richter has disavowed any connection with the film. Richter, born in Germany in 1932, is one of the most successful artists of our time.

What struck me about the film is the challenge that faced German artists of the postwar era. How could one process and address the horrors of the Nazi regime, and how could one not? In the film, Kurt finds his authenticity through the words of his aunt, "Never look away."