In Berlin at the end of World War II, Wilhelm Furtwängler (Stellan Skarsgård) is conducting Beethoven's 5th Symphony when yet another Allied air raid stops the performance.

[2] Arnold gets an office with Lt. David Wills (Moritz Bleibtreu), a German-American Jew, and Emmaline Straube (Birgit Minichmayr), daughter of an executed member of the German resistance.

Footage of the real Furtwängler shows him shaking hands with Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels after a concert.

In the same year (2001) Keitel played an opposite role as SS-Oberscharführer Erich Muhsfeldt in the film The Grey Zone.

[4] Furtwängler was specifically charged with supporting Nazism by remaining in Germany, performing at Nazi party functions and with making an anti-Semitic remark against the part-Jewish conductor Victor de Sabata.

[6] To the criticism of both movie critics and American audiences of depicting the American Denazification officer Maj. Steve Arnolds (Harvey Keitel) as a "caricature, a bully, a Philistine", screenplay writer Ronald Harwood told The Jewish Journal that he went on to comb archives for denazification transcripts and to interview officials who had supervised such proceedings.

But Skarsgård's performance is poignant; it has a kind of exhausted passivity, suggesting a man who once stood astride the world and now counts himself lucky to be insulted by the likes of Major Arnold.

"[8] Stephen Holden of the New York Times also gave the film a positive review, saying that "Sparked by the actors' powerful performances, Arnold's moral absolutism and Furtwängler's lofty aestheticism make for a dramatically compelling clash.