01
Mephisto
Why this pick
Szabó’s morally pressurized portrait of an artist bargaining with authoritarian power carries the same intellectual intensity, period detail, and refusal of easy moral verdicts.
A FILM WORTH A CLOSER LOOKTHE FEATURE PRESENTATION
MOVIE2001 1h 48m FRA
IF THIS ONE STAYED WITH YOU
Movies like
Taking Sides
DramaHistory
CINEHUNCH / THE NEXT FRAME
Keep the feeling.
SIMILAR PICKS / A PERSONAL CONNECTION
If you loved Taking Sides, try these.
01
02
The Reader
Why this pick
A postwar German reckoning shaped by testimony, guilt, and compromised judgment; its measured drama similarly makes the audience weigh personal responsibility against history.
03
The Conformist
Why this pick
This exquisitely composed Fascist-era drama studies complicity through a psychologically divided protagonist, matching Taking Sides’ fascination with art, politics, and moral self-justification.
04
Amen.
Why this pick
A rigorous wartime ethical confrontation in which institutional duty and personal conscience collide. Its restrained, debate-driven tension is close to Taking Sides’ interrogative force.
05
The Confession
Why this pick
Costa-Gavras turns political accusation into a stark psychological ordeal, sustaining the same claustrophobic pressure and distrust of verdicts predetermined by ideology.
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01 / THE STORY
A little about the film.
In Berlin at the end of World War II, Wilhelm Furtwängler (Stellan Skarsgård) is conducting Symphony No. 5 (Beethoven) when yet another Allied air raid stops the performance. A minister in the Government of Nazi Germany comes to Furtwängler's dressing room to advise him that he should go abroad, and escape the war. The film then jumps to some time after the Allied victory. U.S. Army General Wallace (R. Lee Ermey) tasks Major Steve Arnold (Harvey Keitel) with "getting" Furtwängler at his denazification hearing: "Find Wilhelm Furtwängler guilty. He represents everything that was rotten in Germany".
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02 / FACES IN THE FRAME
The people who bring it to life.
Stellan Skarsgård
Dr. Wilhelm Furtwängler
Ulrich Tukur
Helmut Alfred Rode, 2nd violinist
Oleg Tabakov
Colonel Dymshitz
Hanns Zischler
Rudolf Otto Werner, oboist
August Zirner
Captain Ed Martin
Harvey Keitel
Major Steve Arnold
Moritz Bleibtreu
Lt. David Wills
R. Lee Ermey
General Wallace