Never Look back

I usually don't like to go to the theater to watch a movie from the previous year even in February. Once I've closed off my year-end rankings, it's on to the next year. All theatrical visits need to be reserved for new material.

So July? When I have about three other movies that I already need to see?

It's not normal, to say the least. I did go to a critics screening of A Monster Calls in 2017, corresponding with its delayed Australian release, but that was a bit of a different story given that it was a "free" screening and I was reviewing it. (Of course, all my screenings are free since I have a critics card that lets me in to movies without paying, but for some reason I think of a critics screening as different -- maybe just because it feels special.)

Never Look Away has also gotten a delayed release in Australia after having picked up a surprise Oscar nomination for best cinematography last year (to go along with its less surprising nomination in the best foreign language film category). Instead of relegating it to an eventual viewing on DVD, however, I trekked out to the theater Tuesday night to see what all the fuss was about.

That sounds a bit dismissive, considering that I have genuine reason to buy in to the fuss. The debut film from German director Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, The Lives of Others, was among my top ten films of the previous decade. He temporarily derailed his career with the Johnny Depp-Angelina Jolie vehicle The Tourist in 2010, but I suspected that a return to his native country and tongue, wrestling with similar material as he wrestled with in Others, would be a promising sign for this undeniable talent. And yes, after nearly a decade out in the wastelands of presumed unemployment, he's been allowed to return with a new movie.

But the decision to see the movie in the theater was further complicated by two factors: 1) its imposing length, and 2) the other movies currently in theaters that demand my attention. The movie is 189 minutes long, which is no joke. It immediately became one of the ten longest films I've ever seen in a theatrical setting. At least they had the decency to start it at 8 p.m. Then you've got the fact that I've already been trying to figure out how to schedule Yesterday, Under the Silver Lake and Spider-Man: Far From Home, which weirdly opened two days ago, on a Monday -- unheard of unless that Monday is also Boxing Day, the year's biggest release date. At this point I've resigned myself to the fact that Lake is getting relegated to an eventual digital rental. (I said "DVD" earlier, but who am I kidding?)

What ultimately clinched it for me was the mandate to see great films on the big screen. And Never Look Away sure had the potential to be great, I figured -- at the very least I knew its cinematography was big-screen worthy, which is really the biggest loss from watching a beautiful film on a small screen. As much as I was looking forward to it, I was also kind of eating my vegetables and being a good cinephile by choosing the three-hour German film over the Beatles and Spider-Man.

Well ... I could have watched the first hour in the theater, popped over for a 9:15 screening of Yesterday, and finished the rest of Never Look Away at home at an unspecified later date.

The first hour of the movie is everything I would have hoped for in terms of a World War II historical epic that bleeds over into the Communist rule over East Germany. It left me fairly tingling. I had made the right decision, and my thermos of licorice tea would get me through.

Unfortunately, that's only a third of the movie. The last two-thirds deal primarily with the protagonist discovering himself as an artist. And that is ... not as good. And the tea was ... not enough.

I still liked Never Look Away on the whole, but as the scale dropped from epic to more intimate, even the things the movie was doing right -- which, to be fair, was most things -- felt something less than grand. And since the most interesting part of the movie was clearly in the rear view mirror at this point, the scenes started to feel plodding and indulgent, even as the filmmaking remained at a very high level. If you are going to run 189 minutes, you have to really justify that, and this film did not.

I'll have a review up in the next few days if you want to read more of my thoughts, but that sums it up pretty well.

So maybe my usual philosophy of never looking back is the right one. Never Look Away had already lost its chance to be one of my best films of 2018, but I wanted to give it a go at being one of the best of the decade. Spoiler alert: It's not.