István Szabó's Taking sides is what most would call a chamber drama. The number of characters are reduced to a minimum and most scenes take place in one room. Despite several moments of bad acting (most of them Havey Keitel's interpretation of an obnoxious, aggressive American) and despite the poorly written dialogue ("I am an artist and I believe in art"), Taking sides deals with quite interesting questions concerning art, responsibility and what it is to say that one "does not engage in politics". The film revolves around Steve Arnold, an American army major, who investigates the case of conductor Wilhelm Furtwängler. Unlike some other musicians, Furtwängler didn't flee Germany. Rather, his career seemed to have been supported by the Nazi élite. When interrogated about his collaboration with the Party, Furtwängler downplays his political responsibility. He does this by appealing to a separation of art and politics. Arnold shows no understanding for Furtwängler's attempt to absolve himself from responsibility; his interrogation style oscillates between earnest questions and outright abuse. (Does Arnold have an agenda? That remains unclear.) One of the points Arnold makes is that sometimes you are involved in politics, whether you want to or not.
The film is not pretending to solve the question about responsibility. Instead, it poses some questions and holds up the kinds of answers people have to these questions. What form these answers take express something about how a specific person understands herself (and what we, as viewers, are inclined to think). Is Furtwängler a naive person? What does it mean to call him "naive"?
A flaw of the film is, however, that it doesn't go far enough, but it lets its character slip into the conventional caricature trap.
(PS: Istan Szabo has made one of the worst films in the history of cinema, Sunshine. It was a good thing that I didn't know this while I sat down to watch Taking sides.)
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