The Lives of Others
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Movie Reviews of The Lives of Others
Movie Review: The Man In the Grey Flannel Life
Summary: 5 Stars
Made on a shoestring budget of $2 million, The Lives of Others is the most suspenseful psychological thriller I've seen in a long time, ranking with Francis Ford Coppola's The Conversation and John Frankenheimer's The Manchurian Candidate. What's more, it presents one of the strongest pro-individual, anti-collectivist themes of any movie I've ever seen--all the more surprising because it hails from, of all places, Germany.
Its key lies in its title, which seems at first glance drippingly altruistic. The year, appropriately, is 1984, and Captain Gerd Wiesler (Ulrich Mühe) is in his twentieth year as an agent of East Germany's dreaded Ministry for State Security, commonly known as "Stasi." The "shield and sword" of the Socialist Unity Party, 100,000 Stasi agents and 200,000 paid informers hold the small Soviet satellite nation in a death grip, monitoring and controlling the lives of its 17 million citizens.
Captain Wiesler is a meticulous interrogator, ruthlessly wearing down suspects until they confess. An instructor at the Stasi academy, he trains future agents always to be on guard. "The best way to establish guilt or innocence is non-stop interrogation," he instructs his students. "The enemies of the state are arrogant. Remember that. "
A humorlessly menacing man, Wiesler leads a lonely, Spartan existence in an antiseptic, sparsely furnished apartment in a concrete high-rise that houses many fellow agents. One day at the academy, his former classmate and current boss, gregarious Lieutenant Colonel Grubitz (Ulrich Tukur), drops in with an assignment right up Wiesler's alley. One of their artists appears to be straying from the flock, and Wiesler has been assigned to watch him. However, the subject in question is no dissident, but the most celebrated playwright in East Germany, Georg Dreymann (Sebastian Koch)--a citizen so loyal to the Party that he believes his is "the greatest country on earth."
Later that evening, spying from a balcony seat with opera glasses, Wiesler detects the mark of subversiveness on Dreymann's face as he watches the actors onstage performing his play. As Georg beams with proprietary approval, rising to applaud, Wiesler quietly utters to himself a one-word indictment that seals the dramatist's fate: "Arrogant."
Georg lives with longtime companion Christa-Maria Sieland (Martina Gedeck)--a radiant brunette who is as celebrated an actress as Georg is a writer (and to whom Wiesler clearly takes a fancy). While they are out of their flat, Wiesler's technical team descends upon their home, bugging the place. "Operation Lazlo" is now in full swing, and Wiesler and his partner monitor their subjects around the clock from the apartment building's empty attic.
At first, the surveillance of Georg and Christa appears fruitless. At a dinner party they host, a hysterical theatrical colleague (Hans-Uwe Bauer), who's suffered detention and psychological torture at Berlin's infamous Hohenschönhausen prison, accuses another director of being a Stasi informer. Georg is quick to defend the man against the accusation.
Yet, through the course of his work, Wiesler makes some rather ugly discoveries about the investigation. He learns that it was ordered at the behest of national Culture Minister Bruno Hempf (Thomas Thieme), a porcine bureaucrat who's extorted sexual favors from Christa under the threat of blacklisting her. Wiesler also eventually finds his friend Grubitz's schmoozing to be a cover for vicious social climbing and discovers that Grubitz is complicit with Hempf's scheme to use Stasi as a cat's paw to eliminate Georg, his romantic rival.
Within Wiesler stirs a realization previously kept repressed: that his unquestioning faith in his country has enabled not his ideal of the perfect socialist state, but the hideous arrogance of avaricious thugs who run everything in the "workers' utopia."
Where once was the heel-clicking impersonality of a robot, a conscience begins to grow. Wiesler comes to view Georg and Christa and their circle of bohemian friends not as specimens under a microscope, but as real individuals, with hopes and dreams, loves and heartbreaks. Having grown a conscience, he soon also yearns for a heart, as he silently assesses the utter emptiness of his own life.
Swept up in his subjects' personal lives, Wiesler's detached spying turns into voyeurism. But it isn't a perverted voyeurism, because, for the first time, the lonely captain catches a glimpse into a world of beauty, poetry, and music that is alien to his two-dimensional existence. Sympathetic to the predicament of these enemies of the state, Wiesler begins covering for them, faking his reports, and remaining silent about Georg's gradual disillusionment with the DDR after an old director friend (Volkmar Kleinert) commits suicide.
He overhears an argument in which Georg confronts Christa with knowledge of her affair with Hempf. Christa--already insecure about her talent--explains that she fears being blacklisted if she breaks it off. Wiesler feels compelled to protect her: He accidentally-on-purpose runs into her in a bar, pretending to be a fan, and tells her that her performances have inspired him. "Many people love you for who you are," he says, sincerely. "You are even more yourself onstage than you are in real life."
Christa dismisses his compliment, telling Wiesler he can't really know her. "Did you know that I would sell myself for art?" she asks. "But you already have art," he counters. "That would be a bad deal; you're a great artist."
Though his simple compassion, he gives Christa the strength to believe in herself and renounce her extorted affair with Hempf. But in doing so, Wiesler unintentionally sets into motion a nail-biting series of events that leads inexorably both to tragedy and redemption.
The Lives of Others is a superb film, top-drawer in every regard. Cathartic and ennobling, it recalls Fahrenheit 451 and We the Living in its presentation of tragic heroes forced to examine their deepest-held yet deeply mistaken principles. Hagen Bogdanski's cinematography is compelling; through subtle differences in lighting he gives Silke Buhr's sets an additional dimension that places the characters in emotional context. Shot with tungsten-balanced film, Georg and Christa's incandescently-lit apartment radiates warmth; yet by capturing with daylight film the omnipresent, fluorescent-lit settings of the Stasi world, Bogdanski renders it cold and bloodless. Gabriel Yared's simple, haunting soundtrack is the perfect evocative counterpart for the action onscreen.
The acting is realistic, but never naturalistic. Martina Gedeck is a pleasure to watch, not merely because of her physical beauty, but for her impressive emotional range. Ulrich Tukur's capacity to turn on a dime from regular guy to cold-blooded manipulator is simply scary. And Sebastian Koch combines a physically imposing presence with a gentle, almost fatherly manner, reminding me of a younger Rutger Hauer.
But Ulrich Mühe steals the show as Wiesler. I have never seen an actor convey such a broad range of feelings within such narrow parameters. Where a Pacino or a Steiger would explode with ferocity, Mühe underplays, moving the audience with the sudden shift of an eyebrow, the drawing-in of a cheek muscle, or the quiet fall of a teardrop that betrays his sphinx-like façade.
Mühe began his acting career in communist East Germany. When government records were opened to the public after German reunification, he learned that his actress wife had been informing on him to the Stasi during the entire six years of their marriage. Clearly, he drew upon this reservoir of traumatic betrayal for this role.
The Lives of Others is flawlessly crafted, completely engaging the heart and mind. Most impressive is the fact that it's Henckel von Donnersmarck's feature film debut, released while he was still at the relatively young age of 32. In a recent interview, von Donnersmarck--who saw life behind the Iron Curtain first-hand when he visited family in East Germany as a child--spelled out his thoughts on communist repression as well as independent filmmaking:
"The [phrase] 'Independent film' makes sense to me only if it means that the director has full artistic control. How could a film be independent otherwise? ... I know that very well from East Germany: Until the Wall came down, the Dictatorship of the Proletariat had Final Cut on everything: novels, plays, films, even paintings. Make no mistake: hardly ever did they actually censor anything. But looking back at the art of those four decades, you can still feel the state in everything, and most of the art of that era is very impersonal and boring. Because the artists censored themselves, often without knowing it."
Imagine my surprise, then, when the PC crowd at the recent Academy Awards ceremony--who feted environmental scam-artist Al Gore for his global warming crock-umentary--also bestowed the Best Foreign Language Film award upon The Lives of Others, rather than upon heavily favored Pan's Labyrinth. (I think Lives deserved the nod for Best Motion Picture overall, but I'm not unhappy that the Academy gave that award to director Martin Scorsese's The Departed, a consolation prize for snubbing him so many years.)
This cinematic masterpiece is a cause for celebration. Rarely has a filmmaker burst on the scene in such total command of his material. As a directorial debut, The Lives of Others belongs in the same company as Orson Welles's Citizen Kane. I can only hope that Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck has a Touch of Evil yet to come.
Movie Review: The Man In the Grey Flannel Life
Summary: 5 Stars
Made on a shoestring budget of $2 million, The Lives of Others is the most suspenseful psychological thriller I've seen in a long time, ranking with Francis Ford Coppola's The Conversation and John Frankenheimer's The Manchurian Candidate. What's more, it presents one of the strongest pro-individual, anti-collectivist themes of any movie I've ever seen--all the more surprising because it hails from, of all places, Germany.
Its key lies in its title, which seems at first glance drippingly altruistic. The year, appropriately, is 1984, and Captain Gerd Wiesler (Ulrich Mühe) is in his twentieth year as an agent of East Germany's dreaded Ministry for State Security, commonly known as "Stasi." The "shield and sword" of the Socialist Unity Party, 100,000 Stasi agents and 200,000 paid informers hold the small Soviet satellite nation in a death grip, monitoring and controlling the lives of its 17 million citizens.
Captain Wiesler is a meticulous interrogator, ruthlessly wearing down suspects until they confess. An instructor at the Stasi academy, he trains future agents always to be on guard. "The best way to establish guilt or innocence is non-stop interrogation," he instructs his students. "The enemies of the state are arrogant. Remember that. "
A humorlessly menacing man, Wiesler leads a lonely, Spartan existence in an antiseptic, sparsely furnished apartment in a concrete high-rise that houses many fellow agents. One day at the academy, his former classmate and current boss, gregarious Lieutenant Colonel Grubitz (Ulrich Tukur), drops in with an assignment right up Wiesler's alley. One of their artists appears to be straying from the flock, and Wiesler has been assigned to watch him. However, the subject in question is no dissident, but the most celebrated playwright in East Germany, Georg Dreymann (Sebastian Koch)--a citizen so loyal to the Party that he believes his is "the greatest country on earth."
Later that evening, spying from a balcony seat with opera glasses, Wiesler detects the mark of subversiveness on Dreymann's face as he watches the actors onstage performing his play. As Georg beams with proprietary approval, rising to applaud, Wiesler quietly utters to himself a one-word indictment that seals the dramatist's fate: "Arrogant."
Georg lives with longtime companion Christa-Maria Sieland (Martina Gedeck)--a radiant brunette who is as celebrated an actress as Georg is a writer (and to whom Wiesler clearly takes a fancy). While they are out of their flat, Wiesler's technical team descends upon their home, bugging the place. "Operation Lazlo" is now in full swing, and Wiesler and his partner monitor their subjects around the clock from the apartment building's empty attic.
At first, the surveillance of Georg and Christa appears fruitless. At a dinner party they host, a hysterical theatrical colleague (Hans-Uwe Bauer), who's suffered detention and psychological torture at Berlin's infamous Hohenschönhausen prison, accuses another director of being a Stasi informer. Georg is quick to defend the man against the accusation.
Yet, through the course of his work, Wiesler makes some rather ugly discoveries about the investigation. He learns that it was ordered at the behest of national Culture Minister Bruno Hempf (Thomas Thieme), a porcine bureaucrat who's extorted sexual favors from Christa under the threat of blacklisting her. Wiesler also eventually finds his friend Grubitz's schmoozing to be a cover for vicious social climbing and discovers that Grubitz is complicit with Hempf's scheme to use Stasi as a cat's paw to eliminate Georg, his romantic rival.
Within Wiesler stirs a realization previously kept repressed: that his unquestioning faith in his country has enabled not his ideal of the perfect socialist state, but the hideous arrogance of avaricious thugs who run everything in the "workers' utopia."
Where once was the heel-clicking impersonality of a robot, a conscience begins to grow. Wiesler comes to view Georg and Christa and their circle of bohemian friends not as specimens under a microscope, but as real individuals, with hopes and dreams, loves and heartbreaks. Having grown a conscience, he soon also yearns for a heart, as he silently assesses the utter emptiness of his own life.
Swept up in his subjects' personal lives, Wiesler's detached spying turns into voyeurism. But it isn't a perverted voyeurism, because, for the first time, the lonely captain catches a glimpse into a world of beauty, poetry, and music that is alien to his two-dimensional existence. Sympathetic to the predicament of these enemies of the state, Wiesler begins covering for them, faking his reports, and remaining silent about Georg's gradual disillusionment with the DDR after an old director friend (Volkmar Kleinert) commits suicide.
He overhears an argument in which Georg confronts Christa with knowledge of her affair with Hempf. Christa--already insecure about her talent--explains that she fears being blacklisted if she breaks it off. Wiesler feels compelled to protect her: He accidentally-on-purpose runs into her in a bar, pretending to be a fan, and tells her that her performances have inspired him. "Many people love you for who you are," he says, sincerely. "You are even more yourself onstage than you are in real life."
Christa dismisses his compliment, telling Wiesler he can't really know her. "Did you know that I would sell myself for art?" she asks. "But you already have art," he counters. "That would be a bad deal; you're a great artist."
Though his simple compassion, he gives Christa the strength to believe in herself and renounce her extorted affair with Hempf. But in doing so, Wiesler unintentionally sets into motion a nail-biting series of events that leads inexorably both to tragedy and redemption.
The Lives of Others is a superb film, top-drawer in every regard. Cathartic and ennobling, it recalls Fahrenheit 451 and We the Living in its presentation of tragic heroes forced to examine their deepest-held yet deeply mistaken principles. Hagen Bogdanski's cinematography is compelling; through subtle differences in lighting he gives Silke Buhr's sets an additional dimension that places the characters in emotional context. Shot with tungsten-balanced film, Georg and Christa's incandescently-lit apartment radiates warmth; yet by capturing with daylight film the omnipresent, fluorescent-lit settings of the Stasi world, Bogdanski renders it cold and bloodless. Gabriel Yared's simple, haunting soundtrack is the perfect evocative counterpart for the action onscreen.
The acting is realistic, but never naturalistic. Martina Gedeck is a pleasure to watch, not merely because of her physical beauty, but for her impressive emotional range. Ulrich Tukur's capacity to turn on a dime from regular guy to cold-blooded manipulator is simply scary. And Sebastian Koch combines a physically imposing presence with a gentle, almost fatherly manner, reminding me of a younger Rutger Hauer.
But Ulrich Mühe steals the show as Wiesler. I have never seen an actor convey such a broad range of feelings within such narrow parameters. Where a Pacino or a Steiger would explode with ferocity, Mühe underplays, moving the audience with the sudden shift of an eyebrow, the drawing-in of a cheek muscle, or the quiet fall of a teardrop that betrays his sphinx-like façade.
Mühe began his acting career in communist East Germany. When government records were opened to the public after German reunification, he learned that his actress wife had been informing on him to the Stasi during the entire six years of their marriage. Clearly, he drew upon this reservoir of traumatic betrayal for this role.
The Lives of Others is flawlessly crafted, completely engaging the heart and mind. Most impressive is the fact that it's Henckel von Donnersmarck's feature film debut, released while he was still at the relatively young age of 32. In a recent interview, von Donnersmarck--who saw life behind the Iron Curtain first-hand when he visited family in East Germany as a child--spelled out his thoughts on communist repression as well as independent filmmaking:
"The [phrase] 'Independent film' makes sense to me only if it means that the director has full artistic control. How could a film be independent otherwise? ... I know that very well from East Germany: Until the Wall came down, the Dictatorship of the Proletariat had Final Cut on everything: novels, plays, films, even paintings. Make no mistake: hardly ever did they actually censor anything. But looking back at the art of those four decades, you can still feel the state in everything, and most of the art of that era is very impersonal and boring. Because the artists censored themselves, often without knowing it."
Imagine my surprise, then, when the PC crowd at the recent Academy Awards ceremony--who feted environmental scam-artist Al Gore for his global warming crock-umentary--also bestowed the Best Foreign Language Film award upon The Lives of Others, rather than upon heavily favored Pan's Labyrinth. (I think Lives deserved the nod for Best Motion Picture overall, but I'm not unhappy that the Academy gave that award to director Martin Scorsese's The Departed, a consolation prize for snubbing him so many years.)
This cinematic masterpiece is a cause for celebration. Rarely has a filmmaker burst on the scene in such total command of his material. As a directorial debut, The Lives of Others belongs in the same company as Orson Welles's Citizen Kane. I can only hope that Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck has a Touch of Evil yet to come.
Movie Review: A Great Look At How People Lived in East Germany
Summary: 5 Stars
Georg Dreyman (Sebastian Koch), a celebrated East German playwright, doesn't like the way his new play has turned out. Despite the fact the lead actress is his girlfriend, Christa (Martina Gedeck); he feels the play's director lacks the subtlety the material requires. The Cultural Minister congratulates Georg on the play and the artist asks him once again to lift the blacklist on his preferred director. Captain Gerd Wiesler (Ulrich Muhe), a member of East Germany's Secret Police, listens to this exchange and quietly suggests to the ministers that Dreyman should be watched. Wiesler is put in charge of the operation and the Secret Police soon have every inch of his apartment bugged. As Wiesler listens, he begins to get to know more and more about the playwright and begins to respect and like the artist. But his superiors become impatient and want some information about an article published anonymously in West Germany; they suspect Georg wrote it and need the evidence.
"The Lives of Others", written and directed by Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, is Germany's official entry in this year's Academy Awards. The film was just released in a number of theaters and represents an Oscar worthy film.
Set in 1984, the film presents a microcosm of what life was like in the former East Germany. The Stasi, the Secret Police employed vast numbers of employees and secret informants to keep track of and report on the activities of the citizens who are under suspicion; an incredibly large number of people set out to spy on and watch a relatively small population and when this happens, a lot of innocent people are caught in the crossfire. And the people of East Germany knew this system existed, which is why they look through the viewfinders of their doors, but if they see something suspicious, they remain silent. If they raise a fuss, and the Secret Police are involved, they will probably bring suspicion upon themselves. They may even disappear.
Georg's neighbor, a single woman, watches Wiesler and his men enter the playwright's department. After they finish, he senses the neighbor is watching and threatens her, in a way meant to ensure she remains quiet. This is typical of their methods and helps establish how nefarious this group is.
As the State's celebrated playwright, he enjoys a certain amount of celebrity and is reluctant to do anything to threaten that. But Georg knows this system exists as well, even though he seems reluctant to embrace it. He wants to make some waves, cause some changes, because he comes to realize the system is unfair, so he writes an article and enlists a West German to transport it and publish it in Der Spiegel. As soon as the article is published, the East German government is in an uproar and insists they find the culprit. But Wiesler's superiors suspect Georg and Wiesler doesn't want to give him up so quickly. Thus begins an elaborate, well-plotted, subtle game of cat and mouse.
This isn't the stuff of American spy films. Everything is fairly low key, yet none-the-less fascinating. Possibly more fascinating because we believe much of this is actually based on real things that could have and probably did happen.
Georg initially doesn't believe he has been bugged, why would they go to the trouble, he toes the line, barely. But his friends are more cautious, they have had first hand experiences with the Secret Police and are suspicious of everyone, even him. Events soon lead him to believe their suspicions and he moves with an air of caution from that point forward, but he is unwilling to believe their suspicions about who may have reported him.
Sebastian Koch does a great job of portraying an artist who may not be happy with his current way of life, but he isn't so unhappy he is willing to make radical changes. This is the way of life he is familiar with, has grown up with, and is comfortable with, so he accepts it. As he begins to listen to his friends, share their suspicions, his feelings change slowly and he still holds out hope that perhaps they are wrong.
But the most interesting performance in the film comes from Ulrich Muhe. We first meet Captain Wiesler as he leads a seminar for new employees of the secret police, letting them listen to the tape of an interrogation lasting 40 hours. In the end, Wiesler got the information he wanted, but he imparts other information to the students. As he lectures, one of the students raises a question and Wiesler makes a mark next to his name, to remember to have him disciplined. As Wiesler learns more and more about Georg Dreyman, a subtle change happens, and Muhe shows this in a subtle way. His expressions change slightly, showing us how the knowledge he has learned while listening to this artist's personal life has changed him. The change becomes more and more pronounced throughout, in subtle ways, and Muhe does a great job of presenting the conflicts in this character. A life long believer in the Secret Police, he secretly listens to what Georg and his friends have to say and it changes him, causing him no little amount of conflict.
Martina Gedeck is also very good as Christa-Maria Sieland, the preeminent actress in East Germany, as much as that would get her in that climate. She is in a relationship with Georg, a famous playwright, and they are a good couple and she is happy. But she has a secret and the secret may threaten her life and the life of her boyfriend.
There are no car chases, no gun fights, little of what we have come to expect in an American spy film. "The Lives of Others" presents a more subtle, cerebral, but no less suspenseful view of what life was really like in East Germany, in the Early 80s. Throughout the film, we get small glimpses of techniques we wholeheartedly believe were actually used in the Cold War. As Wiesler lectures the class, he admonishes them to remember to collect the seat cover; it will provide the dogs with a suspect's scent. We then watch as he collects the fabric seat cover from the chair used during the 40 hour interrogation and place it in a labeled glass jar, ready should the suspect ever attempt to escape to the West. These little, more subtle moments are all the more scary because they are more real. Did these things really happen? Probably. If they did, this is a society of fear and suspicion and must have been extremely unpleasant for any and all.
"The Lives of Others" is a very good film providing a peek at what life was really like behind the Iron Curtain.
Movie Review: Excellent DVD edition of a great film
Summary: 5 Stars
Donnersmarck's first feature is a film that should have been made years ago: a critical, dramatic depiction of East German governmental repression from a personal perspective. The exhaustive research that Donnersmarck conducted whilst writing the screenplay yields a remarkably accurate portrayal of Stasi operations and the damage that the ubiquitous police force frequently inflicted on the citizenry of the GDR.
In one of his last roles, the late Mühe plays Hauptmann Wiesler, a Stasi educator and surveillance expert. He is a perfect role model for his peers: a meticulous, wholly competent specialist of the technology and techniques implemented to crush dissidence and nonconformity; a thoroughly educated, unquestioning ideologue who conforms to every aspect of state socialist dogma; a tireless agent in support of the overwhelming control that his government exerts over its' populace. He's also a shell of a man who lives an austere existence. Everything in Wiesler's orderly, bloodless life - even his indulgences with a familiar prostitute - is mechanical and ultimately unsatisfying.
Wiesler's life stands in stark contrast to that of Georg Dreyman (Koch), a celebrated author and playwright who enjoys enormous success both in his own country and "the west," circumstances that make him a slightly valuable, conspicuous anomaly. Dreyman is appreciated, accomplished and sociable. His relationship with Christa-Maria Sieland (Gedeck), an equally successful leading lady prominent in productions of his works, completes a life that couldn't be more fulfilling in the GDR. Essentially, he has everything that Wiesler doesn't.
At the premiere of one of Dreyman's plays, Wiesler indulges his professional habits by observing Dreyman and comes to the conclusion that, like so many vital, animated artists, he is a potential danger to the state. Neither man knows that Wiesler's suspicions serve as an accurate prediction of Dreyman's unprecedented rebellion, which is at long last triggered by the suicide of a blacklisted theater director (Kleinert) that the writer has long befriended. But as Wiesler conducts surveillance of Dreyman's home, he finds himself gradually, innately transformed by Dreyman and Sieland's artistic dynamism and romantic passion.
The subject matter of Donnersmarck's excellent script has permitted him to explore numerous personal and political themes in a variety of ways, and he does so with a considered refinement and dramatic severity. While this story could have taken a route that only examines the destructive potential of envy and isolation, Donnersmarck has chosen to create a film that celebrates the virtues of art, love and redemption in the historical context of a relatively recent phenomenon. The GDR has been the topic of many films, a handful of which are notable (Leander Haußmann's "Sonnenallee" is an especially amusing satirical portrayal of the defunct Communist state), but no film has provided such a penetrating, profound insight to the ugliest aspects of Stasi activities (or their consequences) as this one. Donnersmarck exhibits a satisfying appreciation for the obsessive fastidiousness, efficiency and regiment of the German character that's too often been misdirected in the service of the country's worst governments.
Of course, Donnersmarck's ambitions couldn't be realized without the extraordinary accomplishments of this movie's cast and crew. The performances of the veteran cast are exemplary; the story's array of demanding roles are played with naturalistic rigor. These portrayals are so affecting that they make the film's few dramatic contrivances (the most moving and clichéd of these is a surprising tragic death) entirely palatable. Hagen Bogdanski's beautiful cinematography lends a clarity and vibrancy to the proceedings that emphasizes the most colorful elements of an otherwise drab urban environment. The set decoration by Frank Noack is also impressive, providing the film with a detailed period authenticity.
"The Lives Of Others" has finally presented audiences with a serious cinematic depiction of one of the most harrowing periods of contemporary German history. If any of Donnersmarck's future projects are as compelling and profound as this, he's sure to enjoy a long and successful career.
All of the special features on this disc are dominated by the vocal presence of Donnersmarck, who voices commentary tracks for both the film and numerous alternate and deleted scenes, is highlighted in an extensive interview and is prominently featured in the disc's "making of" featurette. Donnersmarck exhibits a fluent command of English that one would sooner expect from a Dutchman than a German, and the balanced tone of his voice is perfect for narrative commentary, as it never seems overbearing. In all of these features, he conveys a wealth of insight and quite a lot of trivia concerning the film's production and his own script.
The deleted and alternate scenes provide few new insights pertaining to the movie's characters and scenarios, but they are impressive and of interest. Donnersmarck appreciates that his already exhaustive film would have been burdened by the addition of these extraneous, albeit effective, sequences.
Movie Review: Will probably join your top 10 list
Summary: 5 Stars
Once in a while, a film comes along, totally unexpectedly, and reveals itself as not just a great film but one that renews your faith in cinema and stays with you long after it has ended. One that shows that film can be the most worthy art form and one which makes you realise this is what the best of cinema really is - intelligent, substantial and made with integrity without employing silly melodramatic contrivances. The Lives of Others is such a film, undoubtedly one of the best films I've seen in the last decade, an intelligent study of a cold, emotionally stern man who undergoes an emotional awakening and humanizing effect by slowly becoming aware of the richness of life that is eluding his own austere existence.
The man in question is Gerd Weisler, a Stasi officer in East Germany in the mid 1980's. He's distrusting and quietly imposing, stands by the socialist ideals of his government and is determined to uncover political dissent wherever possible. He is simply a cog in the regime. There is nothing to warm to, no personality, individuality or life in him. He's a robot worker and nothing else. That is until he is called upon to spy on an artist couple in their apartment who may or may not be up to something. We first see Wiesler's distrust of the writer in an early scene, a distrust based on nothing more than a gut feeling - or perhaps from a twang of jealousy of this man's obvious contentment and fulfillment. To Wiesler, he is simply "arrogant" and so must be a cause for concern. I don't need to go into any more detail about the plot here but needless to say it paves the way for some moments of high tension and clever plot devices.
However, it's what happens to Wiesler's character throughout that really pushes the buttons and makes for such a lasting impression. His transformation from perpetrator to defector, from hunter to protector. During his surveillance mission, he hears everything the couple say and do, mechanically jotting down every last detail in a notebook and then typing up reports. And so he begins to experience the couple's life vicariously and slowly starts to realise that he wants, needs what they have and that he doesn't - friends, love, beauty, fulfillment. We see him start to change, to restrain himself in situations where he would usually impose himself, we see wonderful key moments where he displays acts of kindness and reveals emotions we didn't think he would be capable of. He ends up surprising us, redeeming himself by risking his career and life for the artists, by calmly deflecting the suspicions of his wily superiors about his integrity to the cause, protecting the inevitably tragic couple from above like some personal guardian angel completely unbeknownst to them, who have no idea they are even under surveillance.
Such a character study would be nothing without a great actor and Ulrich Mühe plays the role perfectly, it's hard to imagine anyone else playing it (what a real shame he passed away recently). His role recalls that of Billy Bob Thornton's in The Man Who Wasn't There, someone who hardly says two words but expresses everything beautifully through his body language and facial expressions. We see him in many different states during the course of the film; from a sometimes menacing and ice cold authoritative instructor and interrogator for the Stasi through to a simple menial state postal worker, allowing time to pass him by as he plods along on his route. He is always believable and an interesting character to watch unfold. The rest of the acting is also first rate, especially from Wiesler's Stasi superiors.
Despite the obvious differences, I would sum up The Lives of Others as a The Shawshank Redemption for this decade because of its significant emotional arc. It has a beautifully controlled, unrushed poetic approach and you get the feeling that the filmmaker (also a debut) has put all he has into it, has fashioned it with a lot of care and attention. You could also say that like Shawshank, it follows a man's escape from an oppressive and dehumanising regime to become human once again. Also, the happy ending is perfectly understated and although Wiesler doesn't exactly end up finding happiness, he's afforded a sort of standing ovation at the end and his final words in the film will certainly bring a lump to your throat. You'll want to pat him on the back and shake his hand. An unsung hero given and appreciating the recognition he deserves.