Review: Taking Sides (2001)
Harvey S. Karten
Reviewed by: Harvey S. Karten
Grade: B+
New Yorker Films
Directed by: Istvan Szabo
Written by: Ronald Harwood
Cast: Harvey Keitel, Moritz Bleibtreu, Stellan Skarsgard, Birgit
Minichmayr
Screened at: Preview 9, NYC, 8/20/03
Knuckleheads who insist that films about the Holocaust have
run their course and should be discontinued might as well say
that movies about crime, romance, action-adventure and
musicals have burned out and should be discontinued.
Obviously if a Holocaust film sheds new light on this allegedly
old subject, there's no reason to shunt it aside as though we've
been overly inundated. While one Holocaust film deals with a
fellow who helped save the Jews and another treats the subject
of the Pope's alleged failure publicly to condemn the Nazi
program, "Istvan Szabo takes a new tack: The confusion over
German conductor Wilhelm Furtwangler. Good guy or bad?
Stage-like in its questioning of a German conductor who is
verbally attacked in a large interrogation room, "Taking Sides"
takes advantage of outdoor scenes as they might have existed
in the devastated European country of 1946. More important,
director Istvan Szabo, who helmed the stunning, epic-like
"Sunshine" in 1999, successfully dramatizes a complex
philosophic issue: Should a world-renowned figure have left the
country to protest a detestable totalitarian government, and, if
he remains, is he affording more spiritual encouragement to his
people while at the same time admittedly serving himself?
"Taking Sides" is a fictionalized version of events surrounding
the Allied accusation that Wilhelm Furtwangler (Stellan
Skarsgard) carries criminal guilt for remaining in Germany to
conduct the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, even playing at state
occasions such as Hitler's birthday and accepting honorary titles
from Hermann Goering. Briefly stated, Furtwanger's defense
rested on these affirmations: 1) he never joined the Nazi party
and refused to salute Hitler, carrying a baton in his right hand as
a pretext for abstaining; 2) by remaining in Berlin, he was able
to help scores of Jews who had been sent to concentration
camps; 3) Germany was home regardless of who sat in the
Chancellor's seat; 4) most important, art and politics are
separate; the artist should be cut some slack that may not be
afforded to mere mortals.
The apologia sounds convincing, and indeed the tribunal that
judged Furtwangler during the denazification period of the late
1940's paid careful attention. Nonetheless, Furtwangler comes
under heavy fire from Major Steve Arnold (Harvey Keitel), who
is being pressured by his immediate superior General Wallace
(R. Lee Ermey) to throw the book at the famous conductor.
As Arnold conducts his interrogation first telling his assistant,
Lt. David Willis (Moritz Bleibreau) and transcriber Emmi Straube
(Birgit Minichmayr) to call him "Steve"--he falls so in love with
his own prose that, forgetting the pressure he is under, soon
treats the pre-tribunal questioning as though the defendant had
murdered his own son. One cannot be blamed for thinking that
Arnold, whose musical tastes ran at best to jazz, considered
himself outflanked by a man whose interpretations of Beethoven
made him one of the most revered conductors of the 20th
Century. Arnold keeps the great man waiting as though the
triage administrator of a bustling hospital emergency room; fair
enough. But director Szabo errs in instructing Harvey Keitel to
conduct his interrogation and cross-examination as though he
were an evangelist preaching hellfire and damnation the
essential ugly American while with minor exceptions Skarsgard
is allowed to walk away with the film's honors by beautifully
underplaying his role. Skarsgard is the man to watch in this one
as he demonstrates a seething contempt for the Philistine who
temporarily has such authority over him. In a nuanced role, the
Swedish actor plays the conductor as a man who is tired,
burned out, but having just enough will to survive that he
responds to each of the brash officer's biased questions.
As if members of the audience will have no idea who to root
for, Munich-born Moritz Bleibtreu in the role of Lt. Wills and Linz-
born Birgit Minichmayr provide additional clues. Both have
good reason to hate the Nazis; the former because his parents
were killed in the camps, the latter because her father was
executed after a failed attempt to assassinate Hitler.
Among the finer moments of the film is a chamber music
concert held in a bombed out church, the audience simply
opening umbrellas without a word while the players proceeded
as though in Avery Fisher Hall. "Taking Sides" will make
contemporary movie-goers wonder what the fuss in '46 was all
about, but times have changed just as the Americans
abandoned denazification rituals because of their need for
Western Europe's help against the Soviet Union.
Not Rated. 105 minutes.(c) 2003 by Harvey Karten at
Harvey...@cs.com
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