Listonixio Fresh and Exciting

Glimmerubro It is not deep, but it is fun to watch. It does have a bit more of an edge to it than other similar films.

CrawlerChunky In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.

AshUnow This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

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.

geast-2 A thoughtful film well worth seeing and trying to accept as 'happening' as you view it. ( one tends to want to take sides with what may well be wasted empathy - though of course one actually cannot know the final outcome.) The finest moment of ultra clarity making the entire film both entertaining, of worth and full of great depth, comes during the end-of-film credits & is LIVE ACTUAL ARCHIVE FOOTAGE. Don't take you eyes off the black and white archive film running behind the end-of-film credits that the director repeats (plays TWICE for you,so that you especially do NOT miss it) as this footage gives you the truth about Furtwängler and how he felt about the (former) present regime in Germany.

petra_ste Ironically, the main limit of Taking Sides is how it doesn't want viewers to choose which side to take - it's clear who the filmmakers side with.Germany, World War II aftermath: Major Arnold (Harvey Keitel) investigates the involvement of famous conductor Wilhelm Furtwangler (Stellan Skarsgard) with the Nazis. As a tense confrontation between the two unravels, the movie focuses on the moral responsibility of intellectuals who supported the regime.Furtwangler, we learn, used his authority to help several Jews and support the nation with his art; Arnold sees him as morally bankrupt, as he accepted the regime instead of openly condemning it.Skarsgard is exceptional as Furtwangler, playing him as a dignified man who is at the same time humiliated by his plight and proud of his work. Keitel is a great actor, but he is saddled here with a character written as boorish and one-dimensional. The movie obviously sides with Furtwangler - fair enough, but, to make sure viewers agree, the Major is painted in a very unflattering light and comes across as a straw man. It's a cheap shot for an ambitious script.Still, Taking Sides juggles with important questions and the epilogue is powerful, with a broken Furtwangler descending a staircase in an empty building while Beethoven's Fifth plays in the background, and then footage of the real Furtwangler who seems to be wiping his hands with a handkerchief after shaking them with the Nazi authorities.6,5/10

weed_harper I came to this film with a detailed knowledge of the actual historical events. Many viewers will most likely be largely unfamiliar with the complexities of the case, and there are some details which are important, but glossed over.For example: there are frequent references in the dialogue to Furtwängler's rival, Herbert von Karajan ("Little K.") Why did the Americans attack Furtwängler, and not von Karajan, who was an ardent Nazi? Furtwängler was prevented from conducting in the U.S., while von Karajan was lionized. Perhaps the makers of this film thought that the implications of this were too big to be discussed in the film. I'm sure that they didn't even want to go near the fact that the people who ran the de-nazification program were Americans with close ties to the Nazis themselves.Also, Furtwängler's rationale for staying in Germany was somewhat more philosophical than the film implies. He thought he was defending the legacy of Mozart, Beethoven et al against the Nazis, and that this was a sacred responsibility. A bit of this comes out in the film, but in a superficial way.With respect to the success of the film otherwise, Stellan Skarsgaard is excellent as Furtwängler, even managing to resemble him somewhat. I think that Harvey Keitel is somewhat hampered by the script -- the film would have been more successful if Keitel had come off as more conflicted and less one-dimensional. Clearly the director wished to imply that Keitel was conflicted, but that, as a military man, he was required to toe the line -- the frequent shots of Army indoctrination films (about how bad the Germans were) were intended to provide a rationale for Keitel's behavior. But the film would have been more compelling if Keitel were given an opportunity to express more doubts about what he was being asked to do. I also thought that the ending was a bit anticlimactic.