THE YORK TIMES
By A.O. Scott
 |
| Tom Schilling in “Never Look Away.” Credit: Caleb Deschanel/Sony Pictures Classics |
“It’s almost an idea,” one of Kurt Barnert’s fellow students at the Kunstakademie in Düsseldorf says of Kurt’s latest effort. It’s meant as both criticism and encouragement, and a reminder of the aesthetic rules at this WestGerman outpost of the early ’60s avant-garde. Kurt — the fictional protagonist of “Never Look Away,” who bears a close biographical resemblance to the actual German painter Gerhard Richter — is a recent arrival from the East German city of Dresden, where they do things differently. “Never Look Away” bristles with half-formed thoughts and almost-heady insights, and hums with an ambition that is exasperating and exhilarating in equal measure. “Never Look Away,” working on a grander scale in muddier genre territory — not quite a biopic, it hovers between psychological drama and period romance — tries to achieve a similar blend of clarity and excitement. [
More]
 |
| In the film, Oliver Masucci plays an art teacher modeled on the artist Joseph Beuys. |
