Never Look Away (Werk ohne Autor—"work without author") is a 2018 film from Germany directed by Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck.
It spans over thirty years of German history. The story begins in Nazi Germany, specifically 1937 Dresden, with Kurt, a child of about six. Kurt is living with his Aunt Elizabeth because his father has lost his job over reluctance to join the Nazi Party. Kurt is a precocious child who is showing stunning talent as an artist. Elizabeth, a free-spirited young woman, takes him to an art exhibition to encourage him.
Unfortunately, Aunt Elizabeth is a schizophrenic, and soon after the trip to the art gallery she suffers a full-on breakdown and is sent to a hospital. 1937 Germany is a very bad place to be institutionalized, and the "hospital" is really a forced sterilization clinic. But there are even worse fates than sterilization. The administrator of the clinic, evil eugenicist SS doctor Carl Seeband (Sebastian Koch), sends Elizabeth to an SS murder facility where she is gassed to death.
Kurt survives the bombing of Dresden in 1945 and goes to art school at an institute in what is now East Germany. He falls madly in love with a gorgeous fashion student, also named Elizabeth, although memory of his aunt leads him to call her "Ellie". Eventually, Ellie arranges for her boyfriend to meet her rich, well-connected father—Professor Carl Seeband.
Tropes found in Never Look Away:
- All Germans Are Nazis: Zigzagged. The widespread and horrific systematic evil of the Nazis is shown during the World War II-era scenes, but Kurt's family (including his uncles in the military) and the father of another girl who Seeband sterilizes oppose the Nazis' crimes and philosophies. Kurt's father does join the Nazi Party to keep his job, but does so reluctantly. Ironically, this costs him his job once the war ends. When he points out that 3/4ths of teachers joined the Nazi part willingly or unwilling, the school superintendent says that he will entrust the safety and education of children to the quarter who never became Nazis. The post-war German civilians are also portrayed fairly positively.
- Artistic License – History: Van Verten, a plane radio operator shot down in the Crimea, surrendered to the Americans—who were never anywhere near the Crimea.
- Bait the Dog: Seeband initially has an unreadable facial expression when he's inducted into the sterilization and euthanasia program. After Kurt's aunt breaks down begging in front of him he seems uncomfortable, and backs out of performing the sterilization procedure himself. Then he calmly condemns Kurt's aunt to death with a stroke of his pencil.
- Best Friends-in-Law: Kurt's father and maternal uncles get along well, with one of Kurt's uncles advising his father about how to mispronounce Heil Hitler in a way that no one will notice.
- Bond One-Liner: When Seeband is interrogated by the Russians, he defends his work in the euthanasia program by saying that he's making more space in the world for the strong. The Russian interrogator tells him, with a meaningful look, that soon there will be one space in the world. Ultimately, however, he spares Seeband's life after the prisoner saves his newborn son's life during childbirth.
- Boyfriend-Blocking Dad: Professor Seeband, who doesn't like his daughter being with Kurt. He mixes "overprotective dad" with "evil Nazi eugenecist" when he tricks her into getting an abortion.
- Call-Back: Kurt greets his father when Johann, working as a janitor, is cleaning the stairs Kurt's walking up. Towards the end, when Kurt is the janitor and Seeland is on the stairs, Seeland ignores him.
- Cigarette of Anxiety: Seeband smokes a cigarette for the first time in the movie, after finding out that his old Nazi mentor Burghard Kroll has been arrested.
- Defector from Commie Land: Kurt and Ellie after they cross into West Germany. Later followed by Ellie's parents after General Murayov is transferred back to Moscow and can no longer cover up Professor's Seeband's crimes.
- Dirty Coward: Professor Seeband tries his damnedest to avoid persecution for his war crimes as a Nazi doctor and even hid behind the Russian officer after gaining his favor by delivering his son until he learned to the officer is being transferred to Moscow, forcing Seeband to flee to West Germany.
- Dramatic Irony:
- Kurt's mother Waltraud strong-arms her teacher husband into joining the Nazi Party. Johann is anti-Nazi and does so very grudingly, because Waltraud says after the war it will be his "capital". The audience of course knows different. After the war Johann is barred from teaching.
- Kurt is hesitant about renting a room in the Seeband mansion, but Ellie assures him that her mother will never suspect a thing. Kurt does not tell her that her mother caught him after he jumped, naked, from Ellie's room.
- Driven to Suicide: Kurt's father is unable to find work after the war as a teacher because of his unfortunate decision to join the Nazi Party. He hangs himself.
- Dr. Jerk: Professor Seeband is a gynecologist and a Nazi eugenicist, of which he has never given up his old beliefs even in the post-war Germany.
- Extra! Extra! Read All About It!: Seeband finds out that his Nazi boss Burghard Kroll has been arrested, when a boy actually comes into a restaurant (the one where he and Kurt are eating), hawking a newspaper with the headline.
- Flashback:
- A flashback to little Ellie watching her father try on an SS uniform and practice his Hitler salute during the war, as adult Ellie realizes, or rather admits to herself, what Seeband was really up to during the war.
- A long flashback towards the end as Prof. Van Verten tells a story of being badly wounded in the Crimea during the war, and how he was saved by the locals.
- Gilligan Cut: A portrait artist advises Kurt to avoid the academy of art at Düsseldorf, as they are all modern art and very exclusive. Cut to Kurt at the Düsseldorf academy.
- Hey, Wait!: Ellie and Kurt are getting on a tram, and they are defecting to the West that very night. As they walk to the tram an East German guard says "Halt!" They freeze in fear—but the guard is stopping another man.
- Insistent Terminology: Professor Seeband insists that he be called Professor Seeband, not "Herr Seeband." At one poing this gets him punched by a Russian officer.
- Invisible President: Only the back of Hitler's head is visible, as he passes by in a parade and Elizabeth hands him a bouquet of flowers.
- Ironic Echo: Prof. Grimma the East German art teacher decries the Western fondness for individuality in art, describing it as "I! I! I!" Years later Kurt has decided to defect to the West in search of "truth". When his shocked friend Max asks "Who decides what is true?", Kurt smiles and says "I! I! I!"
- Knight Templar Parent: Professor Seeband attempts to sabotage the relationship between his daughter and Kurt out of not wanting to have genetically inferior grandchildren.
- Love-Obstructing Parents: Professor Seeband (secretly a Nazi eugenicist) doesn't approve of Kurt muddying up his bloodline due to his aunt having had a history of schizophrenia.
- Lover's Ledge: The first time Kurt and Ellie make love at her house, her parents come home unexpectedly early and he has to jump out the second story window into a tree completely naked.
- Male Frontal Nudity: Seen at the Düsseldorf art academy during Kurt's first visit there when two men are creating an art exhibit painting every centimeter of themselves while naked from head to toe, one with completely black paint and the other completely white. It's a lot easier to see on the guy painted white.
- Naked Nutter: Little Kurt comes home to find his Aunt Elizabeth totally naked, playing the piano. She is having a schizophrenic episode.
- Never Bareheaded: Prof. Van Verten never takes his hat off; Preusser says that once a student seduced him just to get his hat off but he kept the hat on in bed. Near the end of the film, after telling Kurt of how he was wounded in the war, Van Verten doffs his hat in farewell and reveals a ghastly burn scar.
- Obnoxious In-Laws: After Kurt and Ellie get married, Professor Seeband become this for Kurt. He insults and belittles Kurt's pursuit of art as a profession, he treats Kurt as an inferior, and he gets Kurt a janitorial job in the institute seemingly to help make ends meet, but really to humiliate him.
- Orbital Shot: The camera circles around Elizabeth as she soaks in the sound and feel of the buses, as they all sound off in unison. This shot is repeated at the end when Kurt does the same thing.
- Pet the Dog: Seeband using his doctoring experience to help deliver a Husky Russkie major's wife's baby out of genuine duty as an experienced doctor, earning the major's gratitude and dropping the war crime charges against him.
- Rule of Symbolism: It's very on-the-nose when Prof. Seeband poses for his official portrait in the institute in front of an anatomy skeleton, hanging behind him. Kurt paints the skeleton into the picture, and so Seeband the Nazi eugenicist is immortalized with a skeleton of death looming behind him.
- Screaming Birth: This saves Seeband. He is in a Russian internment camp when the commandant's wife is suffering terribly from childbirth and screaming—the baby is breech. Seeband uses his skills to save both mother and child, and the commandant becomes his personal protector, getting him out of the camp and looking after him for years.
- Self-Imposed Challenge: In-Universe. Kurt and the other young men in the workshop are painting Communist propaganda signs. While the other men use stencils, Kurt paints the block lettering freehand. When an irritated coworker asks why he's painting that way, Kurt the phenomenal artist says "Because I can."
- Shout-Out: Kurt and Ellie watch Psycho, the kind of movie they couldn't watch in East Germany, after they defect to the West.
- Storefront Television Display: Kurt and Ellie goggle as they watch a West German lottery drawing on the televisions in a storefront window. It's an example of the availability of Western consumer goods, but Kurt later draws a connection between lottery numbers and how random elements gain meaning in art.
- Title Drop: In both English and German. Early in the film Elizabeth, while in the middle of a psychotic episode and naked, tells little Kurt to "never look away." She says this again as she's carted away to the euthanasia center. The German one comes at the end when a reporter, evaluating Kurt's exhibit of blurred photos, calls it a "werk ohne autor."
- True Art Is Incomprehensible: This appears to be the attitude of the Düsseldorf art academy. Among the bizarre art Kurt sees there is a woman firing arrows into a wall, and two nude men, one painting himself all white and another painting himself all black.
- Wall Bang Her: After a long period of being stuck and unable to paint, Kurt makes an artistic breakthrough when he starts using amateur photos as a reference to paint from, getting over his mental block. This is followed by Kurt coming home, taking Ellie's clothes off, and banging her against the wall. This reignites their sex life as this is also the first time they've been able to make love after the forced abortion of their child and they start having sex every night afterward, which is how she gets pregnant again with a baby she manages to carry to term.
- Villain Protagonist: Professor Seeband is the film's Deuteragonist and a fervent Nazi.
- You Are Better Than You Think You Are: Kurt's sign-painting boss urges him to apply to art school in a curt, unsmiling speech, while also telling him that his talent can help support his family and create better things than the grim drawings he currently makes but that no one wants to look at.
