Filmography

 From time to time, I like to blog about interesting films and books that captivated me.  Two films released recently that I have tagged as “must see” and which I will likely see again. Both films involve the affect of war on individuals and the disruption in causes in peoples’ lives.  Both raised questions that lingered with me for days.  These films had short runs and are out of most theaters now, but look for them on On-Demand, Amazon or Netflix.  You will not be sorry.  I promise.

They Shall Not Grow Old

About the same time as he launched his midnight raid with bulldozers on Meigs Field in Chicago to destroy the runways before opposition could mount, the son of the Great Patriarch of Chicago, Richard M. Daley (with the concurrence of the Chicago Bears) began to push for corporate naming rights for the home of the Chicago Bears—Soldier Field.  As word of the deal leaked out, Daley took increasing flak.  For Pete’s sake, the stadium is a war memorial, dedicated to the soldiers that sacrificed themselves during WWI.  The whole point of a war memorial is to erect a permanent structure so that these people will never be forgotten.  Astonishingly, it did not occur to Daley to think about the origins of the stadium’s name.

My own introduction to WWI came when I was about eight years old.  My grandparents bought an old farmhouse in Wisconsin and hidden in the attic was a bound collection of raw photographs of WWI from the Chicago Tribune.  These newspaper photos were not for young eyes as they explicitly showed the horror of trench warfare--- the gassed corpses, skeletal remains, the gruesome injuries, horses half-blown away by shells.  I don’t know whatever happened to this collection, but it left an impression on me. 

They Shall Not Grow Old is a magnificent project by Peter Jackson that involved an enormous technological effort.  Jackson took old black and white herky-jerky film footage of WWI held in the British archives, smoothed out the motion caused by hand crank cameras, colorized it, and overlaid the voices of the soldiers to bring the catastrophe of WWI back to life.  And unlike the special effects of Jurassic Park, it’s the real thing.  The 100^th anniversary of the end of WWI came and went without much fanfare.  We don’t think about that war much anymore.  It has faded from memory,  but it left a deep scar on Europe and we are still feeling the effects of it to this day.

What most struck me about this film is the fraternity like camaraderie that the soldiers expressed in the beginning through training, as if they were going to sports camp.  And secondly, how they stepped back into ordinary life after it was over, as if this horrendous thing had never happened.  As I have gotten older, I have become more pacifistic, even though war has never personally touched me.  They Shall Not Grow Old helped confirm my evolving view.  The recent actions that erase our history--- like tearing down statues, or covering over murals (as Notre Dame just did with its mural of Columbus) are an anathema.  Our history, in all its glory and its ugly parts needs to be preserved.  Peter Jackson did a great service to our history by building this visual memorial.

Never Look Away

I almost passed on this film.  Its length of over 3 hours nearly scared me off as a film of that length is almost always a sign of poor, self-indulgent editing.  But just as you can’t tell a book by it’s cover, you can’t tell a film by its length.   This film staggered me with its complexity, beauty, and emotionality.  Loosely based on the life of Gerhard Richter, whose artistic life was torn between two totalitarian regimes--- the Nazis and the Stalinists, until his escape to West Germany.

What made this film an even richer experience for me was listening to the filmmaker Florian Henckel von Donnersmark’s interview with Terry Gross on Fresh Air (https://www.npr.org/2019/03/06/700663706/never-look-away-asks-why-make-art-who-is-it-for) and I highly recommend that you do so before you see the film.  In it, the filmmaker tells us that the art pieces depicted at the beginning of the film are reproductions of Richter’s work from old photographs of his exhibitions.   We also learn that Richter’s  aunt did suffer from some form of mental illness and an open question for me was whether living under the Nazi regime triggered or worsened her condition.  The interview reinforced for me the feeling of authenticity of the film.

Never Look Away shows us the incredible soul crushing weight of both regimes--- the Nazis and the Communists that followed.  The authenticity of the film itself contrasted with the suppression of individual authenticity of artistic expression by the Nazis and the Stalinists. 

The film is at once a wonderful love story with the artist caught between the regimes and facing his love’s father, a holdover Nazi official, that wishes to disrupt and destroy his relationship with his daughter.  Sebastian Koch is masterful in his role as Carl Seeband, the smart, skilled and soulless Nazi physician.   It is a film which could easily have become maudlin and tedious but it never was.

There are so many striking scenes in this film—his aunt’s mental breakdown, the firebombing of the historical city of Dresden, the scene in which his art professor ignites the political posters of the candidates in democratic West Germany.  And yes, there are several sex scenes, but none of them gratuitous, all artfully shot and all well done with a purpose in the film to advance the story line.  The music score is beautiful and perfect for the rhythm of this film.  The title itself perfectly conveys the message of the film.   Never Look Away is one of the only movies I’ve seen over the past decade.  The screenplay, the acting, cinematography, and the music were all superb.  It was a film  in which all of the pieces fit into a gorgeous, authentic mosaic.

I recommend that you see them back to back.  In an era of godawful filmmaking, these are two works of art—one about an artist—that remind us of the destructiveness of war and totalitarianism.  In his Q&A, von Donnersmark said that the cast and crew felt “an incredible responsibility to our parents and grandparents, to do justice to their story, to the decades that they lived through.”

I believe that both of these films succeeded in that task in a major way.