Werk ohne Autor (5 Stars)

This is the German nomination for the Best Foreign Language film at the 2019 Academy Awards. The literal translation of this film's title is "Work without an author", but in English the film is called "Never look away". The film is based on the life of the German artist Gerhard Richter, although the main character in the film is called Kurt Barnert.

The film begins in 1937 with five-year-old Kurt being taken to an exhibition of "Entartete Kunst" in Dresden. That's a very difficult expression to translate. The usual translation is "Degenerate Art", but that doesn't adequately express the same feelings as the German words. "Violated Art" is closer, but it's not completely wrong to say "Distilled Art". The meaning of the expression is that everything that makes art art has been stripped away, and what's left is presented as non-art. In the Third Reich the expression was used to describe modern art. The exhibition in Dresden was used to describe how bad modern art is. Good German artists would paint trees and mountains and beautiful women; degenerate artists like Piet Mondrian would paint boxes.

After the war Kurt becomes an art student. East Germany's Communist system shares its views on art with the Nazis. The recommended art style is "Socialist Realism". Modern art is spurned. As I've mentioned elsewhere, despite its claims to be a different political system, East Germany copied the style of Nazi Germany and can be considered its spiritual successor.

In 1961 Kurt fled to West Germany and studied art again in Düsseldorf. Here he was encouraged to paint modern art, or even not to paint at all. It took him a few years to develop his own original style, and eventually he became famous.

In parallel, the film follows the story of Professor Carl Seeband. Under the Nazis he was a doctor who decided which mentally ill patients should be sterilised and which should be executed. There was no third option. He was responsible for sending Kurt's Aunt Elisabeth to the gas chambers. After the war he escaped punishment and was put in charge of Dresden's largest hospital. Kurt dated his daughter and eventually married her. Despite his claims to be a good socialist, Carl still believed that those with inferior genetic qualities shouldn't be allowed to breed. He too emigrates to West Germany, albeit legally, and the contact remains.

This is a powerful film. It shows how a talented painter managed to find his way despite the prejudices all around. He created a new art form which was initially rejected even by the advocates of modern art. It's a long film, running for 182 minutes from the beginning to the credits, but it was never for one moment boring. It's difficult to imagine that there will be a better film in its category at the Academy Awards.