"Taking Sides" powerfully depicts difficult questions most thinking people have had: who is really responsible for genocide? Are all Germans responsible for Nazism? (All Rwandans ... Cambodians ... ? This list could continue forever until we are all in the prisoner's dock.) How is it that highly cultured people, who loved Beethoven, could commit inhuman crimes? Harvey Keitel plays an American officer in post-World-War-Two Germany who is given the job of dealing with Wilhelm Furtwangler, perhaps the best classical music conductor in the world. The question is, can Furtwangler be associated with the crimes of Nazism? Harvey Keitel and Stellan Skarsgaard give equally riveting performances, but Skarsgaard stands out because he depicts a type that films don't often focus on: a man so dedicated to his high art that he comes across as an extraterrestial when confronted with concrete concerns. His performance was certainly Oscar worthy.
In a scene as heartwrenching as any I've seen in any film, Furtwangler attempts to present his carefully prepared philosophy of art. To say that he is rudely interrupted is an understatement. I cried for him, and for humanity.
Keitel depicts a driven man who wants justice, but who arrived too late to exact it. Nazism's victims are already dead. He can't save them. And, so, he embarks on a Quixotic quest to bring down a man whose relationship to Nazism is questionable.
Keitel's character wants desperately for the world to be painted in black and white, with heroes on one side and devils -- a word he uses -- on the other. At a key moment, his secretary, whose WW II family history is pertinent, makes a key disclosure that might have served to widen and deepen his view of the world. But this is a man who does not want a wider or deeper view of the world. He wants justice, something others might call revenge.
Moritz Bleibtreu, Birgit Minichmayr and Ulrich Tukur are poignant, heart breaking, and thought provoking in smaller roles.
Kudos to Ronald Harwood for his merciless script. Like characters on screen, I often wanted to take a break, to say, "This is just too much." The script falls like a hammer on very difficult issues.
