Taking Sides

Seattle Post-Intelligencer William Arnold

After a somewhat shaky start, the film gradually settles in to become another extraordinarily powerful and explosively acted drama that deftly probes the moral responsibility of an artist in a totalitarian society.

Boston Globe Wesley Morris

Proves acutely subtle. But its question of what we forgive art in the face of atrocity and immorality is one for the ages.

Chicago Tribune Michael Wilmington

A rarity -- an intelligent and moving drama of ideas that becomes increasingly thrilling as the ideas unfold.

The New York Times Stephen Holden

Sparked by the actors' powerful performances, Arnold's moral absolutism and Furtwängler's lofty aestheticism make for a dramatically compelling clash.

Los Angeles Times Kevin Thomas

In compelling, suspenseful fashion, Taking Sides illuminates brilliantly the dilemma of a great, world-renowned artist flourishing in a totalitarian regime.

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

The movie is both interesting and unsatisfying. The Keitel performance is over the top, inviting us to side with Furtwangler simply because his interrogator is so vile.

Miami Herald Marta Barber

This is courtroom drama at is best, especially when you listen to the sublime soundtrack.

Portland Oregonian Kim Morgan

Compelling and superbly acted.

Christian Science Monitor David Sterritt

Ronald Harwood's screenplay, based on his stage play, brings an impressive range of moral and political issues into play. The acting is also strong.

The New Yorker Anthony Lane

The deep drawback of Taking Sides is that it forgets to be interested in music. [8 September 2003, p. 100]

Chicago Reader J.R. Jones

This dialectical drama has plenty of creaky moments, but Harvey Keitel compensates with a canny, surprising performance.

Variety Derek Elley

Its soul rests in Skarsgard's performance, a powerful mixture of buttoned-down anger and personal disappointment that combines the filmmaker's self-questioning with the real-life character's conflict.

LA Weekly Ella Taylor

Stellan Skarsgård's deceptively low-key performance as the beleaguered musician -- furtive, indignant, drowning in self-pity blended with a kind of ruined nobility -- pushes the emotional temperature to a quiet fever pitch.

New York Daily News Elizabeth Weitzman

Characters do little more than run around the same track incessantly, leaving us waiting for revelations that never arrive.

New York Post Megan Lehmann

A compelling look at a vexa tious question, Taking Sides is, at times, hamstrung by its own ambiguity.

New York Magazine Peter Rainer

Taking Sides has a padded-out, stagebound quality that is anything but lyrical. And Szabó, a Hungarian best known for "Mephisto" and "Colonel Redl," is not at his best here.

Village Voice Leslie Camhi

Flawed but fascinating.

Empire David Parkinson

Powerful, personal, but bombastic.

Philadelphia Inquirer Steven Rea

Boy, can Harvey Keitel be bad -- and not bad like "Bad Lieutenant," bad like bad acting.

The Onion (A.V. Club) Noel Murray

Taking Sides is really no less simplistic than "Sunshine," but its predecessor succeeded because of its length and scope. Taking Sides stays rooted in one place and one discussion, and never gets anywhere.

TV Guide Ken Fox

Be sure to stay for the coda, a damning piece of newsreel that casts much of what went before in a whole new light.

Premiere Laine Ewen

The idea for the film is engaging and interesting, but the result is bland.

The New Republic Stanley Kauffmann

We can almost hear the way he (Keitel) will speak a line before he speaks it. The triteness of the role and its performance, instead of dramatizing the contrast between this philistine and the artist, makes the confrontation between the two men a smug setup.

Entertainment Weekly Lisa Schwarzbaum

The sides to consider in Taking Sides are all but obscured by cinematic pomposity at best, Holocaust porn at worst.

Washington Post Michael O'Sullivan

The notions of the good man's complicity through inertia and of innocence tarnished by association are ones that have been more powerfully explored before.

San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle

The movie's promise -- to provide a balanced argument -- goes unrealized, and all we're left with is the spectacle of an idiot bullying a genius.