Never Look Away: Search for truth in sprawling epic

Never Look Away is a sprawling epic inspired by a bizarre twist in a real-life artist’s tragic family history.

A sprawling epic about the intersection of art, history and personal tragedy, German film Never Look Away is the follow-up from The Lives of Others director, Oscar-winner Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck.

Technically, the Johnny Depp and Angelina Jolie mishap The Tourist was Donnersmarck’s follow-up, but cinephiles would altogether prefer to forget all about that.

Inspired by the eventful life of German artist Gerhard Richter, Never Look Away takes key moments from the painter’s life, from the pre-WWII Nazi days to early acclaim in the 1960s.

Nominated this year for Best Foreign Language Film and Best Cinematography at the Oscars, Never Look Away is a three-hour movie of emotional depth that, despite its long running time, maintains its grip on your attention.

Tom Schilling is best known to English-speaking audiences for his role in Suite Francaise

Donnersmarck makes his storytelling seem easy-flowing and natural, never laboured or obvious, and it’s a joy to watch.

The Richter stand-in, Kurt Barnert (Tom Schilling), is a young child in the days before World War II. His young aunt Elisabeth (Saskia Rosendahl) tries to nurture his artistic talents by taking him to exhibitions of provocative art, labelled by the state of “degenerate art”.

When Elisabeth starts to exhibit symptoms of schizophrenia, she’s committed to a state institution in Dresden, ultimately becoming a victim of the Nazi’s murder program against people with mental health problems.

After the war, Kurt attends the Dresden Academy of Art, where, keeping with the Soviet philosophy of the GDR, he’s taught the only kind of art with any value is socialist realism, propaganda works designed to capture and inspire the proletariat.

For an artist, it’s somewhat limiting.

It’s here he meets Ellie (Paula Beer), a fashion student from a wealthy family whose eugenics-obsessed gynaecologist father and former Nazi medical officer Carl Seeband (Sebastian Koch) happens to have a grisly connection to Kurt’s family tragedy — not that anyone is aware of it.

Never Look Away takes its English title (in German, it was named Work Without Author, a reference to Richter’s early reputation) from a line that Elisabeth says to a young Kurt — “Never look away, what’s true is always beautiful”.

It encapsulates what Kurt is trying to find — truth in art, truth in life, and the truths obscured.

As an artist, his quest for truth (and the beauty that follows) is an ongoing journey, especially for someone who was contained by the rigid ideology of East Germany.

Director Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck has a flowing narrative style

Once Kurt and Ellie “escape” to West Berlin, the freedom to create any form of art, using any material or method, overwhelms him as he searches for significance and truth in his work while his life weaves through momentous events in German 20th century history.

Germany and Kurt are entwined — like Kurt, it’s a country grappling with identity after trauma.

Donnersmarck has crafted a beautiful movie, underpinned by wonderful performances from Schilling and Koch, Caleb Deschanel’s luminous cinematography and an evocative score from Max Richter.

Chilling connection between Kurt and his father-in-law

Few movies even dare to explore the value of art — to society, to the individual, to the creator and to those standing before it in a gallery — and there are characters throughout Never Look Away who try to express what it should mean. None of them are right and none of them are wrong.

Never Look Away doesn’t impose some declaration that it should be one thing or the other — rather it leaves that subjectivity up to the audience.

Rating: 4/5

Never Look Away is in cinemas from Thursday, June 20

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