Taking Sides
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Movie Reviews of Taking Sides
Movie Review: Whose side are you on?
Summary: 4 Stars
I just rented this after a recommendation from a fellow Amazonian. The film was quite good, although it could hardly be described as exciting, and I thought the overall production quality left much to be desired. Nevertheless, the film was intellectually and emotionally provacative, as it highlights the moral outrage by the occupying Americans in Berlin at any and everything Nazi related. Specifically, it follows one Major Arnold (Keitel) in his determined effort to indict the famous German conductor Wilhelm Furtwangler (Skarsgård) for aiding and abetting the Nazi party. The much beloved and renowned Furtwangler is adamant in his innocence, although he is clearly racked with guilt for his association with the Third Reich. For his part, he claims that he was solely a musician, and he always strove to keep art and politics separate. He had no love for the Nazi party, but felt compelled to stay in his country rather than run away. The film seems to ask, where is the fine line between criminal accessory and dedication to your profession and/or country? Great performances by Keitel and Skarsgård.
One of the most interesting aspects for me was the conflict between Arnold and his assistant David Wills, the latter being an American Jew of German descent. Wills is far more sympathetic to Furtwangler and consistently tries to defend him against the ruthless Major. I don't really think the film itself "took sides" but tried to show the issue from both perspectives. I myself went back and forth and think that both men were "right" in their own way. It also goes without saying that we all have our personal biases which could sway us to one side or the other.
As for being revisionist, I cannot say. It did seem that Major Arnold was a bit over the top at times, but I also don't see this necessarily being far-fetched. I can only imagine how the first hand experience of seeing the concentration camps would effect someone pyschologically. But is moral outrage an excuse for your own ruthlessness? This film seems to address this issue. All in all, a solid, intellectually and emotionally challenging film that I don't hesitate to recommend.
Movie Review: A good film that could have been a great film...
Summary: 3 Stars
Taking Sides starts with a superb scene. We are at a concert in Berlin as the great maestro Wilhelm Furtwangler conducts Beethoven's Fifth Symphony to a rapt audience. (Ironically, the piece was also a symbol of victory of the allies, with it's da-da-da-duum motto suggesting dot-dot-dot-dash--Morse Code for "V[ictory].") At the height of the drama, there's an air raid, spotlights start shining outside, and the lights in the hall eventually go out. It really happened. Both sides played Beethoven while bombs fell. Some recordings have even been preserved, and one can hear Wanda Landowska in London, for example, performing as bombs dropped around her.
Unfortunately, the rest of the movies doesn't live up to that great opening moment, or to another moment a short while later where a crowd of post-war music lovers sits in a bombed out cathedral, umbrellas raised, listening to Schubert in the rain. It's hard to give such a high-minded and ambitious film as "Taking Sides" a less-than-great evaluation (can you imagine sitting in a room and pitching this to a production company???), but "Taking Sides" disappoints and delights in almost equal measures. I have been wishing for years that someone would make a movie about classical music in this period in history and finally someone has. Unfortuantely, the budget on this was probably very very small, and it shows. But one doesn't have to necessarily have lots of bucks to make a great film. Still, the ability to film on more locations, better CGI effects (yes, this film has CGI effects in the form of bombed out buildings) and *a better editor* would have all helped things a bit. The editor on this picture was all thumbs, filling some scenes with inexplicably quick cutaway shots lasting fractions of a section, leaving other scenes to be one-shot monologues, even when you think it would be better to see a reaction, and inserting jump cuts awkwardly. We go from closeups to extreme long shots back to closeups without any rhyme or reason I can see (for a better example of how to handle this kind of shooting and editing, watch Patton), scenes are dropped carelessly in, with no thought to entrance or exit, and a whole subplot with a Russian officer who wants to trade "five conductors for my favorite Wilhelm Furtwangler" could have been reduced to one scene, or even left on the cutting room floor. It's so insignificant that I've been reading critics' reviews of the film on line all night, and not one has even mentioned it. It's five minutes of padding and just interrupts the main dramatic line.
Harvey Keitel plays his part with a little too much bluster from the getgo, so there's never a buildup. His one-note performance wears thin, and I'm not sure why they made the representative of one side of the argument a pig-headed ignoramus who in his way is as reprehensible as the Nazi barbarians he rails against. And the big moment at the end (I won't spoil it) regarding a recordng of the Adagio of the Bruckner 7th fell flat to me, because that seems to be one of the things you really *couldn't* fault Furtwangler for. And I would really like to know a little more about *how* Furtwangler saved some of his musicians from the death camps; having Keitel brush that away as besides the point was a cop-out on the film's part.
I kept waiting for the two minor characters, the secretary and the junior officer, to find something revelatory in that library search once they seemed to turn sides, but they never did. A lot of background information was tantilizingly hinted at, but that part of the story didn't feel fleshed out enough. I'm a subscriber to the Henry James theory of drama: if there's a gun on page one, by the end of the story it has to go off. To me there were some guns in this script that had their triggers cocked but were never fired. Pity. For example, early on, Furtwangler points out that other conductors who were far more implicated (Herbert von Karajan, for example) had already been cleared and were back to conducting. I would like to have known more about that--why and was there "politics" involved and who ultimately made these decisions. We could have seen Furtwangler's personal affects, what he had and what sort of "trunk" he was living out of. I would like to have learned more about how the post war conditions were affected Furtangler's life--his meager living situation and his reliance on the kindness of strangers--instead of just seeing him shuffle into the interrogation room every day.
But that's not to slight Stellan Skarsgard's performance, which is remarkable--while he didn't look much like Furtwangler and they didn't even try (too much hair!), I forgot all about that after five minutes, and thought about George C. Scott's comments about portraying General George Patton: what was important was not an exact resemblance but rather giving the *impression* of the man. Skarsgard certainly does that, based on the footage I've seen of Furtwangler, though the two definitely had different conducting styles!
Some have complained of the claustrophobia of the film, because it comes from a stageplay. I am more bothered by, as I said, strange choices of editing, never really letting us move around and breathe in the environment we're in. Remember that great scene in Chinatown where Jack Nicholson goes snoooing through the desk of the water commissioner early in the film? You learn a lot about the man and the time period in that scene. And as Jack explores LA, you breathe the air of the 1930s and feel like you're "living" there with the characters, and it's all done in an effortless way. This film could have used some of that, and a little less of Keitel and Skarsgard screaming over a desk.
The best moment may be saved for last. While Furtwangler never does convince Keitel's character of his sincerity--how could he?--and we are left wondering if perhaps Furtwangler's defense was more of an excuse than a defense, we cut to archival footage of the real Furtwangler at a concert. Nazi officers, including Joseph Goebbels, Heinrich Himmler and Hermann Goering, are present. After the event, Goebbles walks to the podium to shake Furtwangler's hand. (The movie talks a lot about a handshake with Hitler and seems to imply this is it, but in truth the famous photo is of Furtwangler *bowing* to Hitler as Hitler remains seated.) After touching the hand of the propaganda minister, Furtwangler discreetly does something that says more about his true feelings than all the fighting across a desk ever could.
The DVD image is sharp, and the sound is excellent. There are some talking head interviews about the production, and a puzzling six minute "Making of" short that has no narration, no structure, and very little sound, and just appears to be randomly strung-together bits of behind-the-scenes footage. It's totally pointless.
Movie Review: 3.5 stars: fairly good but should have been much better
Summary: 3 Stars
"Taking Sides" is the story of the U.S. Army's witch hunt to tie conductor Wilhelm Furtwangler to Nazi atrocities after World War II, when they stripped him of his ability to conduct the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, which he had led from 1922-45. Furtwangler was eventually absolved of all charges against him for cooperating with the Nazis and resumed the directorship of the orchestra in 1948, which he held until his death in 1954.
Furtwangler was, with Arutro Toscanini, the biggest name conductor in the world in the middle 20th century. Their competition across the Atlantic (Toscanini was in New York beginning in the 1930s) was similiar to the transatlantic competiton between Furtwangler's eventual successor, Herbert von Karajan, and Leonard Bernstein in New York from the 1950s through their deaths in 1989 and 1990, respectively. One of the oddities of the film is the American in charge of persecuting Furtwangler (Harvey Keitel monumentally miscast) is his trying to convince Furtwangler he stayed in Germany after Nazis rose to power to protect his position against the young upstart Karajan, whom they comically labeled "little K."
Not much else in the movie is very funny, however, and too much of it is not all that good. Keitel is poorly cast in a role Gregory Peck would have relished in his prime and played in layers and degrees, while Stellan Skarsgard is equally poorly cast as the conductor Furtwangler. The Swede Skarsgard is about the same height as Furtwangler but otherwise bears no physical resemblance. He lacked the conductor's strange gait and his deliberate ways and demonstrated little variation in temperament. Poor casting in the two most important roles is the biggest strike against the film. I can only imagine what this would have been with actors the quality of Adrien Brody and Daniel Day-Lewis played the leading roles.
Otherwise, this is a fairly interesting movie that has marginal success carving out the various philosophical arguments for and against Furtwangler's relative level of capitulation and participation in the Nazi regime's ongoing slaughter in Europe circa 1933-45. Just about all music fans, myself included, would judge Furtwangler innocent before seeing the film on the basis of the legend written about him in the musical press. This is all repeated in the film -- that he saved Jews, that he stayed in Germany to serve art, not politics, and that because he never gave the Nazi salute he was in no way a stooge of Hitler and his crowd.
However, I found the evidence against Furtwangler, as argued by Keitel's character, to be equally successful. For instance, why did Furtwangler stay in Germany after it became clear in the 1930s that Jews were going to be executed? Was it for vanity? To maintain his personal position in European society? Wasn't Furtwangler, in doing so, little more than a poster boy for the Nazis? Wasn't he their front man? And, if his only pursuit was art and the Nazis liked other conducotrs, why did they play the Furtwangler-BPO recording of the Bruckner 7th Symphony in Berlin the day Hitler died? Wasn't that because they loved Furtwangler and revered him as part of Nazi establishment? For me, this discourse was the best part of the movie and the only place where either of the lead characters were continually effective. Skarsgard never had such moments.
The European location shooting was quite good and the cinematography was excellent. As you might expect, marvelously restored recordings by Furtwangler leading the Berlin Philharmonic in Beethoven, Brahms and Bruckner were played throughout the movie. There was another scene of a quartet playing in Berlin in the rain -- because the auditorium no longer had a roof. A handful of other scenes were also effective in creating the aura of postwar Berlin. Unfortunately, poor casting in the two principal roles undid many of these good elements and cast the film as more of an average effort. Still, it's the only cinematic treatment of this particular piece of European history and, for that reason, I recommend it to anyone with interest. There are many fine extras, too, including interviews with the cast members and a brief discussion of the time and place of the events.
Movie Review: Well done but underdone. A great underacheivement!
Summary: 3 Stars
This movie went far, just not far enough. It brimmed with intriguing thought-provoking dialogue offered via reasonably consistent quality acting. Exploration of the few characters in cast was above stereotypical. As a thought-provoking medium on de-Nazification of post-war Germany it scores on several levels, however the tragedy is that this movie held within it's immediate grasp seeds of magnificient opportunity which might have bloomed with a bit more complex plotwork. As a result, it felt more like a 'piece of a movie', for just as another 'session' of the interrogating winds down and you expect a plot twist to flare, the end credits start rolling when you're halfway through your popcorn.Movie Review: Give It a Rest, Major
Summary: 2 Stars
Harvey Keitel's character, Major Steve Arnold is offensive in a way peculiar to the American entertainment machine. He fuels his investigation of a symphony conductor with emotion derived from repeated viewings of a bulldozer pushing the dead of Bergen-Belsen into a mass grave. Although it is a pre-trial inquiry, Arnold is convinced from the beginning of the guilt of the "defendant". Guilt of what? Not murder. Not Nazi party membership. Guilty of not leaving Germany in 1934 and continuing to work as a conductor. This, in Arnold's narrow mind, constitutes complicity.The crowning outrage is the conductor's actual handshake with Adolph Hitler after a performance. For this Arnold berates him during endless interrogation sessions in his office, which makes up the bulk of the film. His voice quivering with rage, his vocabulary brimming with street punk vulgarity, he humiliates the conductor in a variety of ways until he feels he's "proven" his case.
One watches with a growing frustration as the hapless conductor tries to prove he is not a Nazi or anti-semite with feeble statements on art and the human spirit. No mention is made of the limited choices available in a totalitarian society. What, for example, was the conductor to do when the Fuhrer extended his hand to shake? Slap him in the face? Shake his hand only on condition the Fuhrer come backstage for a lecture on ethics? The major seems to have not the slightest inkling that the Nazis used piano wire for other things than making pretty music.
This is based on a true story, but I doubt very much anyone in the US Army conducted himself in this way with the conductor. This movie seems to grow more out of the Hollywoodish belief that if you work yourself into enough of a moral outrage and stamp your little foot loud enough, you can right retroactively all the wrongs of history.
It's unclear whether the writer/director actually sides with the shallow Arnold, or with his callow assitants, but he certainly gives the former the upper hand throughout the movie. When his stenographer, Fraulein Straube, resigns her post in revulsion over Arnold's Gestapo tactics, Arnold pulls her over to the movie projector to watch the Bergen-Belsen footage. One wishes she had some footage to show him, perhaps of skin falling off children with radiation sickness in the city of Hiroshima, or of mass graves operated by the major's "pals" in Siberia, pals with whom he not only shook hands, but had dinner and drank himself into a stupor with.