“All that is true is beautiful”; a death sentence for one, a life sentence for another.
The above mentioned quote could be considered the essence of the entire trama of this film. Jumping back and forward from one character to the other, it is a statement about art being a conveyor of truth and a major pillar for the preservation of sanity in a broken society.
So, having as background everything from Nazism, war and then an ideologically and politically divided Germany, the film goes on, through the artistically driven protagonist’s life journey of loss and love, to illustrate his creative process as a psychological, even spiritual one, while also being directly related to the artist’s own emotional identity. All of this is eventually achieved thanks to his undying inner knowing of what he knows himself to be at the core; in his own words: “untouchable”. Thus, he sails through hardship, moved by this absolute certainty of his and the stubborn resolution to just paint. So he paints. He paints his path towards meaning and transcendence; the kind he always carried within, but never knew how to express…
In another tone, it is relevant to mention that the actors in the film, particularly the protagonist and the antagonist, were both marvelously interpreted by amazing actors Tom Schilling as Kurt Barnert (protagonist) and Sebastian Koch as the Nazi criminal Professor Seeband (antagonist). But while in fact, the rest of the cast was just as brilliant, I feel bound to express my impressions on the truly compelling performance of one of these two main characters by going a little bit deeper on why this could be.
Well, there is something about Tom Schilling’s eyes that communicate serious emotional depth, and this makes him perfectly suited for the character Kurt Barnert, first an aspiring painter, next a consummated one, and oddly, quite unsettled yet also inspired in between. But such a baggage of mixed feelings, far from being too much for a role, ultimately appears elegantly encapsulated in Schilling’s subtle and profound blue stare. It certainly won’t make you look away…
This is a movie on making sense of life’s truths and absurdities through art; drenched in philosophical questions but dried out by spiritual very humane answers.
DEEP IN FILMS 