L'oeuvre sans auteur

"Never Look Away" is a seriously good movie. It tells the life of Kurt, a German artist born just before the Nazis took power, who survives the war and studies in East Germany under the Communists, eventually ending up in West Germany and trying to find his own style. The story is engrossing, the acting is good, there are some beautiful nude scenes, excellent camera work, interesting characters, and the insight that all totalitarian societies treat their artists as means to an end. What stops it getting a rating of 10/10 is that everything is just a bit too much. Kurt's beloved aunt Elizabeth, an early victim of the Nazis, is heartbreakingly, almost inhumanly, beautiful. Perhaps she is seen that way by her 8-year-old nephew; but he already shows the precocious artistic talent to see things as they really are. There is a Bad Guy in the film, and he is unremittingly, almost inhumanly, bad. This is not just an artistic failing. By having the Bad Guy so evil, it tends to distract the viewer from the fact that the Holocaust was conducted by ordinary people, not super-villains. The film is long, at 3 hours and 8 minutes. It doesn't feel like that, and I didn't find myself looking at my watch. But it could have lost, say, half an hour, and would have been better for it. And the music is a bit overdone, a bit too emphatic. "Never Look Away" is a very good film that could have been better.

This captivating and moving movie is essentially based on encounters, fortuitous or not, of good omen or not, in Germany, GDR and then FRG.

Professor Carl Seeband (Sebastian Koch) is a brilliant gynecologist, cold and completely devoid of empathy. His 'talent' will enable him to become an imminent member of the Nazi Party and to actively work in the eugenics process in order to improve the 'racial hygiene'. Kurt Barnert (Tom Schilling) is a young artist whose inspiration seems to be animated by repressed memories of his aunt Elisabeth May (Saskia Rosendahl), who mysteriously lost her mind during the rise of Nazism in the 30s, then silently 'disappeared' just before the Second World War: Elizabeth's fate will end at a fatal meeting with Professor Carl Seeband. A few years later, Kurt Barnert will accidentally fall in love with Ellie Seeband (Paula Beer), the only daughter of Professor Carl Seeband.

Freely inspired by the life of Gerhard Richter, the film describes the three decades of a black and then red Germany, struck by two destructive ideologies, before being sold to capitalism. Without reaching the near-perfectness of La Vie des autres (2006), this film is excellent: casting of first choice, neat photography, dialogues skillfully written, captivating scenario, a clever mix of sensual and sweet scenes alternately with cold and depressing other ones, ... As a synthesis: 8 of 10

Ich spreche Deutsch ziemlich gut um zu kommunizieren aber nicht genug um die ganze Kritik auf Deutsch zu schreiben darum I'll write it in English. The new movie by Florian von Donnersmarck mesmerized me from the very beginning - the way he can capture the atmosphere, the way he portrays a main hero and even every little character is outstanding and you can literally never look away while watching this modern masterpiece. I actually don't understand why some movie titles are translated into other languages with their own meanings because "Never look away" does not fully capture the true meaning of it while "Work without author" does that almost perfectly. The author of another great one ("The lives of others", 2006) has not outdone himself but came pretty close to doing so: a movie that's so versatile, so multidimensional that you just can't fully figure it out on watch one - it needs to be watched many times. A story of a young boy growing up, facing difficulties, experiencing life changing moments, disappointments, reevaluations in search of an answer to the eternal question: who am I in this fast-changing world? - does it ever get old? I don't think so.

I watched this at home on BluRay from my public library. My wife skipped, she doesn't like to see movies with subtitles.

I studied German for two years in college, while I can't converse in it anymore I was able to fit the German dialog with the English subtitles.

While there are several intersecting stories the main thread is Kurt, a boy of 8 in 1937 Nazi Germany, being exposed to various forms of art by his 20-something aunt. As he grows, and WW2 comes and goes, he develops into a quite good painter. He eventually has to escape to West Berlin to be free to develop his talents. The story extends through the 1960s.

Part of the overlapping story is of the Nazi programs to purify their race, to see to it that even Germans who had some sort of affliction were terminated, and this was the fate of his aunt who had the occasional emotional malfunction. As it turns out Kurt unwittingly marries the daughter of one of the evil doctors who it seems had named his daughter Elizabeth, the same as Kurt's aunt.

This is a really good movie and at just over 3 hours didn't seem overly long, I can't think of any scene that I would cut. However I watched it over three different sessions with some overlap each time. In the extra on the disc the writer/director explains, in English, how he modeled his story off a real German artist who developed through this same period.

This is a fantastic movie, historical drama and philosophical essey on art at the same time. The runtime might seem a bit long, but once the movie gets your attention, it never lets you go. The well-written charcters are full of life, which delivers a complex yet relatable story throughout the history of XX. century Germany. The film is also beautiful, awesome cinematography. And an inevitable piece if you want to understand the thouhts behind modern art. While the english title is good (Never look away - the primary thesis of the movie), please also notice the original title (Art without author). Recommend 10/10