Never Look Away 4 ½ stars
Never Look Away is an epic storytelling of a young German artist who lived through the time of Nazi Germany and Communist controlled East Germany growing as an artist and developing his own special kind of painting. Its three hour length covers a great span of time from the thirties to the sixties, starting with 10 year old Kurt witnessing a display of “degenerate art” and the horrors accompanying the Nazi’s waging war against the world. After the war, Kurt, the young man (Tom Schilling) works as an artist for the Communist regime of East Germany producing art of the Socialist workers, but you can tell his talent calls for him to be something better. Fortunately, he meets Ellie, a young pretty woman supplying new pencils to the artists. Of course the two fall for each other having secret night rendezvous destined for disaster, given that her father is a former SS Nazi in hiding. Eventually, the two of them escape to the West at the time of the wall going up where Kurt’s artistic career is advanced with the help of prominent artists of the growing movement of contemporary art. The movie is at its best when we see Kurt being inspired to do his best work by the beauty of the world around him, but also influenced by some of the horror he has experienced from his younger days. He develops a way of painting photographic images while blending them together in haunting black and white images. The story is apparently loosely based on the life of real life artist Gerhard Richter, an admired painter of the 20th century. Never Look Away was nominated for Best Foreign Language Film at the Academy Awards and is one that should not be missed.