Taking Sides

Terrific film. I actually saw it twice within a few years, enjoying it even more the second time.Superb acting, engrossing dialog and sublime music. Beethoven, Bruckner, but also American fetching music, with super sexy singing by Rinat Shaham, quite a surprise, as she is internationally known as an opera singer. Not a dull moment and lots of history .But whilst the contrast of world views of the protagonists is epic, one posing impossibly extreme moral demands and the other living in a spiritual, Art devoted musical world, it is difficult to reconcile the basically acceptable moral position of Major Arnold with his coarse and unmerited vulgar disrespect for an artist whose art the Major doesn’t care for and his prejudiced stance vis a vis the man who has yet to answer one single question seems so un-American. In short, Major Arnold is portrayed as an exultant Philistine and a complete, offensive jerk. Makes us Americans look bad, unnecessarily so. In what seems to be a weakness in the script, the numerous well documented instances of Furtwangler’s opposition to the regime and assistance to Jews at his own peril- he was threatened with being sent to a concentration camp- are not mentioned. The conclusion one must reach in Furtwangler’s case is that he was a very decent man navigating an impossible situation at an excruciating time. All this shows his nemesis in an even worse light.