Taking Sides

Having written the screenplays for both Roman Polanski's The Pianist and Norman Jewison's The Statement, Ronald Harwood clearly has a special interest in the moral issues raised by the Nazi horrors. Based on Harwood's play about famed music conductor Wilhelm Furtw@ngler's efforts to secure American permission to resume his career in postwar Germany despite his former connections with high-ranking party officials, director Istvan Szabo's Taking Sides is basically a debate between Furtw@ngler and the American officer who questions him about his past--the voices, as it were, of moral relativism and absolutism--that remains fairly stage-bound despite efforts to open things up visually. Stellan SkarsgDrd is superb as the conductor, genuinely stricken and conflicted as he protests that he was always an artist first, segregating his music from political concerns, but Harvey Keitel doesn't match him as Furtw@ngler's inquisitor, Major Arnold, a blustering philistine given more to simplistic rants than to reasoning, and played without much nuance. As a result the conversation between the two men never achieves a proper balance, with noise too often prevailing over substance. Still, Taking Sides raises enough provocative issues, overall, to warrant watching. Recommended. (F. Swietek)