Taking Sides

Aroview: The ambiguities of Germany during the Nazi era are interrogated with skill in this taut examination of the case of famed classical conductor Dr Wilhelm Furtwängler (Skarsgaard).

After the close of WW2, a US prosecutor is assigned to investigate the musician’s links to the Nazi’s: was he a sympathiser? or merely an apolitical artist? did he capitalise on the Nazi’s need for ‘show heroes’? Further enriching this vein of moral questioning is the prosecutor’s skilfully unscrupulous methods of obtaining ‘results’, assisted by a German jew and anti-Hitler conspirator, who both have their own agendas and boundaries of conscience. Although perhaps overly stagy and dialectical in its presentation, this impresses as a powerful confrontation with emotive historical issues.

Based on the play by Ronald Harwood, screenwriter of THE PIANIST.

NZ International Film Festival 2002

more matches…