Taking Sides

Taking Sides Directed by Istvan Szabo
How could people, with lofty artistic and intellectual tradition (of even silently listening to Beethoven in soaking rain pouring from a bombed off auditorium roof) go back home and support immense barbarism, in the name of Nazi ideas and in the form of silent hero-worship of Hitler? Surely the entire nation would be involved and would have been perpetrators of Nazism. This is the strong belief with which American Major Steve Arnold (played magnificently by Harvey Keitel) comes to Germany with the purpose of de-nazification. However he has his brief from his boss-the enraging, nauseating video clip showing Nazis mutilating piles of Jew corpses and the motto of bringing Wilhelm Furtwangler, the gifted conductor of Berlin Philharmonic during Nazi regime to trial.
America has taken onto herself to sterilize the society of these barbaric Nazis. And of course they believe entire Germany to be ailing with this Nazi disease. And unfortunately, they cannot bring the entire nation to trial. However to set example and crush the last remains of the creepy disease, they would charge Wilhelm Furtwangler accusing him for taking sides with the Nazis. Furtwangler considered being almost a genius is referred to be Hitler’s band-leader by Major Steve. His appeals to having helped innumerable Jews and having made anti-Semitic comments only in the presence of the Nazis (Goebbels and Goering) are dusted off to be his insurance scheme to later pass off as non-guilty. Furtwangler has played on Hitler’s birthday and that almost sums up his support for the Nazi party.
Furtwangler, according to Steve has preferred to stay back in Germany, when his contemporaries were leaving. And this was solely because he had the internal understanding of his security by the party. To the Nazi party, who became custodians of the German art and culture, kept patronizing Furtwangler, even when he was not a party member. And all these have happened with silent approvals from Furtwangler.
The protests and defence presented by Furtwangler are too feeble and scorned off. And this is where the movie actually brings out the real conflict between the two cultures-The boisterous, all-action Americanism, as against the soft, silent apparently acquiescing German high art sense, which allows Nazism to grow.
The debates of the movie are at times extremely one-sided. During his interrogations of the magisterially courtly conductor, Arnold systematically humiliates him. He keeps Furtwangler waiting for hours, and then forces him to ask permission to sit down. Contemptuously referring to the conductor as ''Hitler's bandleader,'' he reviles him with the same kind of obscene language that Nazi officers in the Gestapo used to address Jews in less-than-human terms. And this never allows the creation of dramatic tension out of our uncertainty over who we should believe. American Arnold Steve was painted with such vulgar spirit and vigour, humiliating the soft, self-acclaimed “naïve and exploited” Furtwangler, that we immediately sympathise with Furtwangler. Adding cues were the feeble protests and supports from Steve’s Jewish assistants, Emmi and David, siding with Furtwangler. Emmi’s support towards Furtwangler is because, she believed that like many Germans, Furtwangler too was unable to comprehend the real game being played by the Nazis at the concentration camp. One remarkable part of the movie comes when Emmi’s father a martyr in plotting against the Nazis is praised by Major Steve as someone who was courageous to have moved against Nazism. And to that Emmi Straube replies that her father did not plot against Nazism, rather he fatally plotted against a losing ruler when he realized that Germany would lose the war. Hence Nazism in question was never fought at.
The predominant tone of the movie was the clash between Major Steve’s moral absolutism, 9who believes there cannot be any grey, only black or white and hence, if Furtwangler had played for the Nazis or shook hands with him, he had sold himself to the Nazi ideas) against Furtwangler’s aestheticism and beliefs of art being separate from politics. This important argument that art is separate from politics could have had more meat. Unfortunately this relationship between art and politics becomes a secondary theme and is snubbed off as too unrealistic by Major Steve. I expected this argument to be the defining tone of the movie.
However it is an excellent movie to stir up several questions in your mind…the most important one being , can you keep art separate from politics, or the former becomes a medium of expression for the latter, or the latter is fought on the basis of the former?
Furtwangler was ultimately cleared of the charges by a de-Nazification court, although he was prevented from conducting in the United States.
At the end of the movie, we see the real footages of Furtwangler, conducting at the Berlin Philharmonic, his much alleged handshake with Hitler and then we see in the footage, his wiping off his hands secretly after the handshake… and he also did not give a Nazi salute(one of the few defences, Furtwangler had)…..that was Furtwangler’s way to condemn Nazism
A must watch, if you ask me… (and another thing, after Makhmalbaf's Silence, another movie where Beethoven's 5th symphony is almost a defining background score for the movie.. da.. da..da..dum)