AniInterview
Sorry, this movie sucks
Stoutor
It's not great by any means, but it's a pretty good movie that didn't leave me filled with regret for investing time in it.
Dana
An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.
onedof-llc
An ignorant savage wrote "controversial conductor" about Wilhelm Furtwängler in the annotation to this page of the IMDb. Wilhelm Furtwängler had created not just an orchestra of a new vision of musicianship. Wilhelm Furtwängler had given to all people on Earth their identity of a civilized race. Nobody ever before or since had penetrated so deeply into the nature of music, the most sophisticated human creation. Nobody was able to enplane to us, humans what we are and what we can be so elegantly and clearly. But of cause we the listeners must make an honest effort to listen and try to understand. That is what the creators of the movie had done. I am thankful to them for their work that they had performed for me.There are two episodes in this movie that show us all in comparison to Wilhelm Furtwängler:1. A photograph showing Dr. Joseph Goebbels and Dr. Wilhelm Furtwängler talking to each other. A street bully, a thug Nazi and one of the most civilized and attractive humans who ever lived. 2. Wilhelm Furtwängler is trying to wipe his hand after a had shake with Goebbels while still bowing to the crowd of Nazis at their last concert in Berlin in April 1945.Both these Germans are the members of the same our human race. This film is a respectable effort to understand significance of Wilhelm Furtwängler.
jvdesuit1
I give 5 to the movie just for the sake of the interpretation which is of course outstanding. But as far as the script is concerned this movie misses the point.I don't know who were the guys in charge of the hearings when Fürtwängler was prosecuted. But I do hope they were not such stupid, uncultured guys like the major in the movie. The Wikipedia paper about the movie gives two views of the critics of this movie as follows:Roger Ebert found the movie "both interesting and unsatisfying. The Keitel performance is over the top, inviting us to side with Furtwängler simply because his interrogator is so vile. There are maddening lapses, as when Furtwängler's rescue of Jewish musicians is mentioned but never really made clear. But Skarsgård's performance is poignant; it has a kind of exhausted passivity, suggesting a man who once stood astride the world and now counts himself lucky to be insulted by the likes of Major Arnold."Mick LaSalle of the San Francisco Chronicle finds that the movie's promise to provide a balanced argument "goes unrealized, and all we're left with is the spectacle of an idiot bullying a genius. Harvey Keitel's performance as the smug, self-satisfied major is terribly miscalculated, unless he intended for us to loathe the spectacle of a small, stupid man glorying in his sudden power. That's possible. Stellan Skarsgård plays Furtwängler with an air of exhaustion that seems a generous attempt to justify the script's weakness, that the conductor doesn't defend himself vigorously enough. Of the two men, it's the major who acts more like a Nazi."I think they resume very well the great errors of this film. I doubt any judge would act like this and pretend to try to do a fair inquest. It doesn't make sense.The director and his scriptwriter had many documents to help them build a credible and authentic account of what happened and they just missed it.In conclusion: astounding interpretation for a very poor scenario
girlocelot
Here's another guy who had it going & lost it - Istvan, that is.Harvey is only allowed to be one dimensional, smarmy, smirky & silly.Stellan does his best but only gets one camera angle when he's sitting down, so he looks pathetic - quite amazing when you consider his physical presence & intense often frightening eyes.Furtwangler was anything but pathetic. & you can bet that the real F, who looks to our eyes like the quintessential dork, was charismatic, awkward, intense. Stellan doesn't capture the toughness & autocratic power a great conductor has, but I blame Szabo for that.The only good bits in the film are the well done secondary characters - they are appealing & convincing.I think the big problem is that Szabo thinks he's doing us a favor by blandifying the subject so as to be fair. Wow, what a crock. Give me a strong opinion, I don't have to agree with you.We hardly know by film's end anything about what motivated F to either be a hero or a bastard. So maybe this director should do stuff like "Being Julia" - a slight story that had some juice.The subject of the film matters so much, that he does so little with it makes it more of a failure.Unless you love the idea of Harvey looking like a Xavier Cugat wannabe, skip this boring thang & go straight to something with more social significance, like My Cousin Vinny.
John Holden
One of the worst movies I've had to sit through. It's ostensibly about the WWII-era German conductor Wilhem Furtwengler; it's really just a take on the themes raised by Szabó in his earlier Mephisto.Like Mephisto, this movie is terribly overacted and everything is contrived to let the principal characters expound on (what are presumably) Szabó's issues with artists and Nazis.There's no attempt to tell a story; to show any inner conflict, human frailty or weakness. It's just a podium for Szabó to rant and talk and rant.How bad is it really? Bad enough that even two talented actors - Skarsgard and Keitel - can't do anything in it.Ever been stuck at a party with someone who needs to explain in detail his theory of how the current US president has ties to the healthcare industry? Or how the car companies buy up inventions that would increase fuel economy? Yup, this is about as interesting.
