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Rent Taking Sides (2002)

Taking Sides - based on true events - recreates the suspenseful post-World War II interrogation of Dr Wilhelm Furtwangler (Stellan Skarsgard), the brilliant conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic, who is considered by some to have been the most brilliant conductor of the 20th century. In the course of his de-Nazification by the Allies, Furtwangler is forced by a tough-talking American Major (Harvey Keitel) to re-examine his role during the Third Reich in the most uncompromising of terms. The confrontation between the soft-spoken cultural icon of the old world and the rough, emotional hard-hitter from the new world, makes for some electrifying verbal pyrotechnics, and brings the role of the artist in an evil regime into the limelight, to be examined along with all the other moral issues and ambiguities emerging from World War II.

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Reviewed by: TB
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Taking Sides review by TB

Arts & Politics

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Either you are with us or against us seems to be the motto of the US Major (Keitel) who is asked to interrogate the famous German conductor Wilhelm Furtwängler after the war. The American seems to think that a good German is either dead or in exile. Furtwängler was certainly not in the resistance but did manage to help Jewish and other threatened by the Nazis. The movie is based on a British play so don't expect action, however, look forward to an intelligent film which asks almost existential questions about what you do living in a dictatorship. Aching and powerful - and of course with music by Beethoven and Bruckner.