Director puts focus on artist’s life among Nazis
NEW YORK — At 6-foot-9, Germany’s Oscar winning writer-director Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck makes a towering impression.
So do his films. Donnersmarck’s 2006 “The Lives of Others,” an Academy Award winner for its portrait of a fear-ridden East Germany dominated by the Stasi spy network, is routinely cited as one of the 21st century’s greatest films.
His epic (189 minutes) “Never Look Away” is another look at Germany, beginning in 1937 with Nazi domination and continuing in the postwar divided East ruled by the Communists, and ultimately the West Germany of postwar plenty.
Nominated for two Academy Awards — as best foreign language film and for its spectacular decadespanning cinematography by the legendary Caleb Deschanel — “Never Look Away” is a portrait of an aspiring artist (Germany’s top film star Tom Schilling).
It’s inspired by the life of Germany’s Gerhard Richter, 86, who’s routinely called the greatest living painter.
“I only knew of Richter because of one painting he’d done in photographic style of a beautiful young woman holding a child in her arms,” Donnersmarck said. “He released it as ‘Mother and Child.’
“Only later it was revealed that it’s based on a photograph taken before the war and it was not his mother and her child. He renamed it ‘Aunt Marianne,’ who was actually his mother’s youngest sister holding Richter as a baby.”
When Marianne showed signs of schizophrenia, she was sent to an asylum. “When the Nazis took over, they murdered people who had mental illnesses.”
Later, Donnersmarck learned that “the father of the woman Gerhard married had been a high-ranking SS doctor who had done over 900 enforced sterilizations of women. He was one of the worst Nazis. If you see ‘SS’ it’s really, really bad, and among the SS he was one of the worst doctors.
“But you know what? He got away with it and died in 1988 as a decorated doctor.”
For the filmmaker, this was all irresistible: “It’s an interesting premise to take these elements of artistic coming of age under the most adverse circumstances. What does that do to you spiritually?
“This screenplay is inspired by true events but not a biopic, although everything you see in the film is rooted in reality.
“It’s useful to mix facts into a fictitious story,” he added, “because it helps you, even while you’re writing, to not lose a feel of what the texture of reality is.”