An artist's turbulent path toward realization

Never Look Away looks at an artist's life against several political backdrops.

Making a movie that tries to plumb the depths of an artist's soul constitutes a form of noble foolishness. Noble because the subject can be intriguing and elevating. Foolish because attaining the goal -- finding the key to an artist's work in the welter of an artist's life -- remains speculative and, perhaps beyond the knowledge of even the most self-aware of artists. Like some gifted actors, artists aren't always good at understanding their own obsessions, much less revealing them to others.

The point, I suppose, is that if you're making a movie about an artist, you probably need to turn the artist into a vehicle through which you explore another subject.

In the case of director Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck's Never Look Away, the subject becomes an artist's drive to discover the uniqueness of his vision while living under three very different social and political systems: Nazi Germany as a child, Soviet-dominated East Germany as a young student and West German liberal democracy as an artist on the road toward creative realization.

If you've read anything about Never Look Away, you already know that the movie is based on the life of German artist Gerard Richter, a highly regarded painter whose work has gone through radical shifts during a career spanning nearly five decades. The movie's artist is named Kurt and it's probably a mistake to look at Never Look Away as a precise representation of Richter's journey.

On the other hand, the general thrust of the story and the art that Kurt begins producing in the movie too closely resemble Richter’s life and work to brush all connections aside. The paintings in the movie were done by one of Richter's former studio assistants.

The movie begins when a young Kurt (Cai Cohrs) visits a 1937 exhibition the Nazis dedicated to "Degenerate Art," i.e., art that did not convey an Aryan grandiosity of a kind that matched the Nazi vision. Of course, the art that young Kurt sees with his aunt Elisabeth (Saskia Rosendahl) represents the best and most creative work of the day.

A guide denounces the art but it's clear that young Kurt and his aunt are impressed by work that's being held up as an example of degenerate impulses.

This section of the movie establishes von Donnersmarck's view of the primacy of individual vision, a trait embodied in Elisabeth, a woman who will be diagnosed as a schizophrenic. As part of their obsession with genetic purity, the Nazis eventually sterilize Elisabeth and, if that weren't enough to keep her from polluting the Aryan gene pool, they put her to death in a gas chamber.

The crushing of this unique, sensual and loving character becomes a signature event in young Kurt's life that reverberates throughout the movie. Elisabeth's spirit, more than Kurt's, informs nearly everything else that happens as von Donnersmarck mixes melodrama and artistic exploration.

Carl Seeband (Sebastian Koch) appears as the doctor who seals Elisabeth's fate, an arrogant, efficient opportunist with a big enough ego to embrace whatever political winds happen to blow through his life. A preening, self-impressed gynecologist, Seeband values status as much as he values his skills, which evidently are substantial enough to make the gynecologist for the wives of Goebbels and other Nazi bigwigs.

After childhood, Kurt is played by Tom Schilling. Schooled in a Dresden art academy, Kurt learns and masters the requirements of Socialist Realism, helping to create bold propaganda that turned working folk into muscular heroes laboring to bring utopian Communism into a corrupted bourgeois world.

During this period, Kurt's father (Jorg Schulttauf), a reluctant member of the Nazi party is punished for his sins. Once an educator, he's relegated to scrubbing floors. Eventually, he commits suicide.

During his studies, Kurt meets Ellie (Paula Beer), a student of fashion. They begin an affair that's discovered by Ellie's mother (Ina Weisse). Know that Dr. Seeband will play a strange role in the life of Ellie and Kurt. To say more would amount to a spoiler. Although Kurt's life doesn't much benefit from contact with Seeband, the movie has the sense to keep Koch, a commanding figure, in its narrative.

Eventually, Ellie and Kurt decide to escape to the West. Initially, Kurt is advised to pursue a lucrative career in portraiture and, above all, to avoid the Dusseldorf Art Academy, where anti-classical, free-wheeling trends prevail. Of course, Kurt immediately opts for Dusseldorf, an art school run by Professor Van Vertin (Oliver Masucci), an artist who always wears a hat. Van Vertin insists that students attend his provocative lectures but that they never ask him to look at their work.

Von Donnersmark, who won an Oscar for 2006's The Lives of Others, wisely employed cinematographer Caleb Deschanel to help him create Never Look Away's various looks. The decision paid off. Deschanel has been nominated for an Oscar. Never Look Away also netted an Oscar nomination in the best foreign-language film category.

Don't look to Schilling for histrionics: He creates a character who holds his emotions in check and who always seems to know more than he's revealing in this lengthy (three hours) and not entirely satisfying movie.

Von Donnersmark has assembled the right blocks for his story but can't quite convert them into a fluid, arresting whole. Kurt's life is so full of significant events that they tend to be placed in the story like library books being shelved.

It's possible to look at Never Look Away as a semi-success, a look at a life buffeted by political forces but one that also seems to deserve more than Donnersmark has been able to achieve.

A classy but staid 'Danish Girl'

It looks great, the performances are solid, but early story of a transgender heroine doesn't quite connect.

Einar Wegener was as one of the first people to undergo gender-altering surgery. An artist working in Denmark during the 1920s, Wegener transformed himself into Lili Elbe as he gradually changed his style of dress, added wigs to his wardrobe and ultimately elected to have the surgery that would complete his transition.

According to The Danish Girl, a movie that focuses on Lili's struggle, Elbe died of complications resulting from a succession of difficult surgical procedures, namely the one that was intended to give her a vagina.

As directed by Tom Hooper (The King's Speech), The Danish Girl -- a fictionalized account of Lili's life based on a novel by David Ebershoff -- seems to value classy presentation as much as the emotional dynamics of a story that -- by the end -- becomes an anthem for those who regard their biological genders as mistakes.

Fresh from his Oscar-winning turn as Steven Hawking in The Theory of Everything, Eddie Redmayne portrays Einar who, during the course of the movie, becomes Lili. Alicia Vikander portrays Gerda, a lively and spirited artist who's married to Einar and who remains loyal to Einar/Lili throughout.

The movie makes it seem as if Einar discovers his true gender identity almost by chance. Early on, Gerda's seen working on a large painting of a ballet dancer. When one of her models fails to show up, Gerda asks Einar to put on a pair of stockings and serve as her leg model.

We know from the rapturous, trembling expression on Einar's face that he's begun to acknowledge that he's a woman mistakenly lodged in a man's body.

At first, Einar and Gerda have a good time with Einar's fascinations. Gerda even encourages her husband's interests, suggesting he dress as a woman to attend an annual artists' ball. They'll pass Lili off as a visiting cousin.

At this point, both husband and wife treat Einar and Lili as separate characters, one real, the other, an amusing pose.

Hints of discord arise when Gerda sees Lili kissing a young man (Ben Whishaw) at the artists' ball. Doubts suddenly arise about which part of Einer's dual identity is real and which, a sham.

Redmayne's performance involves a lot of whispered dialogue, and intense observation: He frequently watches women to see how they move, trying to teach himself the externalities of the gender to which he believes he truly was born.

Redmayne's concentrated performance has a dual effect. It makes us wonder how much of what we consider "natural" gender behavior is merely an accumulation of learned gestures.

But this approach also focuses our attention on Redmayne's performance as much as it takes us into the psyche of a character named Lili Elbe.

Vikander gives the movie much of its life, particularly as the couple begins to confront a medical world which either wants to cure Einar of his "perversion" or have him committed to an asylum.

When the couple travels to Paris so that Gerda can exhibit her work, a relationship between Gerda and one of Einar's childhood friends (Matthias Schoenaerts) develops: Schoenaerts' Hans Axgil, a Parisian art dealer, offers emotional support to both Gerda and Lili.

Eventually, Lili and Gerda meet a surgeon (Sebastian Koch) who has been experimenting in gender reassignment surgery. He believes that Lili is precisely what she thinks she is: a woman in a man's body. Lili's willing to brave the risks of surgery to achieve her dream.

Beautifully composed and meticulously upholstered with period detail, The Danish Girl feels like three-quarters of a fine movie: Perhaps Hopper tried so hard to keep things under control that he's locked Lili's pain safely in the past.

Hanks, Spielberg reunite for thriller

Well-made Bridge of Spies takes us back to the '50s for a story of espionage and intrigue.

The opening sequences of Steven Spielberg's Bridge of Spies deal with the arrest of a Russian spy, an incident that allows Spielberg masterfully to establish time (the 1950s) and place (Brooklyn, N.Y.), as well as to infuse a situation we don't yet understand with gloomy tension.

Suspenseful, atmospheric and brilliantly underplayed, the film's early going reminds us just how good a director Spielberg can be.

Based on a true story, Bridge of Spies allows Spielberg to reunite with Tom Hanks for the fourth time.* The movie also provides Spielberg with a canvas on which he can sketch a complicated story about a period when U.S./Soviet tensions were at their peak.

Hanks plays James B. Donovan, a New York insurance lawyer who's drawn into international intrigue when he's asked to defend Rudolph Abel (Mark Rylance), the Soviet spy who's caught by the FBI in the movie's opening.

The legal fraternity feels homage must be paid to the notion of a fair trail, but just about everyone believes that Abel should be convicted without much fuss.

In full decency mode, the instantly likable Hanks paints a portrait of a man trying his best under difficult circumstances. Abel is convicted, but Donavan saves him from the death penalty with a pragmatic argument: Someday the U.S. may need a spy to trade for an American prisoner who has been accused by the Soviets of espionage.

Defending Abel proves costly for Donovan who becomes a bit of a pariah. A brick thrown is thrown through the window of his family's home, and many think he's betraying his country.

But Donovan isn't willing to temporize for the sake of appearances. He's a decent man.

Not only is Donovan a good guy, but -- as it turns out -- he's also prophetic.

Working from a screenplay by Matt Charman and Joel and Ethan Coen, Spielberg also introduces the story of Francis Gary Powers (Austin Stowell), the U-2 spy pilot whose plane was shot down over Russia in 1960. Donovan is asked to travel to Berlin to broker the trade he foresaw.

These chilly Berlin scenes heighten the spy drama as Donovan travels back and forth between West and East Berlin. To further complicate matters, an American student (Will Rogers) also is captured by the East Germans.

Donovan wants both Rogers' character and Powers to be swapped for Abel. The Russians are more interested in a one-for-one deal. So is the CIA, which regards the student as a negligible part of any negotiation.

No James Bond, Donovan struggles through his time in Berlin with a terrible cold that's made worse when several East German thugs mug him and steal his overcoat.

Hanks again gives the movie a reliable center, and a subtly entertaining Rylance makes his mark as a wry but resigned fellow who answers every question about why he's not more panicky with another question: "Would it help?"

Spielberg overworks the line, and can't resist a few Spielbergian touches that go against the movie's dark grain. I won't describe them here, but if you know Spielberg, you'll have no trouble picking them out.

In sum, Bridge of Spies stands as a mature and involving entertainment that recalls a time when our only concern seemed to be with the Soviet Union, and a sense of Cold War menace cast a chill over everything it touched.

*Hanks/Spielberg collaborations include The Terminal (2004); Catch Me If You Can (2002); and Saving Private Ryan (1998).