Review: Never Look Away

by Murtada Elfadl

Tense apprehension is usually how I approach 3 hour long movies. But I shouldn’t have fretted about Germany's Oscar entry Never Look Away. It was never less than totally engrossing and I was completely riveted throughout. For his third picture, following Oscar foreign-language winner The Lives of Others (2006) and Hollywood turkey The Tourist (2010), director Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck was inspired by the life and work of German painter Gerhard Richter. The film tells the story of a 20th century German artist, given the name Kurt Barnert here and played by Tom Schilling as an adult, from his childhood in the 1930s through WWII, growing up in Communist East Germany, then defecting to the West and finding his artistic voice there...

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