Movie Reviews for The Lives of Others

The Lives of Others

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Movie Reviews of The Lives of Others

Movie Review: If Only American Films Could Be This Good
Summary: 5 Stars

I've read that this film won the Best Foreign Film Oscar at last year's Academy Awards...but I can't remember any of the other awards. The dire state of American Cinema is only worsened by far better films coming in from other shores.

While Hollywood gussies up and prepares to throw more awards at anything anti-Bush, anything that features George Clooney (who will out-preen himself at his acceptance speeches instead of his performance), and anything that obese gasbag Michael Moore points a camera at, foreign films appear to be more interested in things like TELLING A STORY or ENGAGING AN AUDIENCE. You know, stuff the focus groups that rule Hollywood appear to have completely forgotten.

But enough about our mess here....

I'd heard about "The Lives of Others" but deliberately stayed out of the conversation because I wanted to enjoy the film from a fresh perspective, so I won't go into every reason why I liked it. Suffice to say I liked just about everything in it. It is a film where everything works.

Set in East Germany in 1984 (an homage to George Orwell?), a Stasi surveillance and interrogation expert named Wiesler, wonderfully played by Ulrich Muhe, is asked to spy on Dreyman, an "upstanding" playwright admired by the State for his "non-rebellious" body of work. Why? A repulsive party member lusts after Christa-Marie, Dreyman's beautiful and talented actress/girlfriend. If they don't find anything on Dreyman...they're to find something on Dreyman.

The story expertly winds and twists through the Cold War landscape of East Berlin as Wiesler, stoicly rattled by the injustice of Dreyman's plot and touched by Christa-Marie's stage presence, goes from being an efficient, machine-like bug to a compassionate human being.

I didn't see a false note anywhere in the film. Like I said: Everything Works. Definitely check it out.

(I was just in Berlin last fall and visited the Stasi Museum, just around the corner from Hitler's bunker. Any German citizen can go in--just as Dreyman did after the Wall fell in the film--and request his or her file to review. A dark and fascinating time in a city still struggling with the shadow of the Nazis. Berlin's a great city. Well worth visiting and taking any of their walking tours).

Movie Review: Compelling And Compulsive Viewing., 2 Sep 2007
Summary: 5 Stars

Plot:

East Berlin, 1984. State Security begins surveillance on playwright and, on the surface at least, good socialist Georg Dreyman (Koch). But as the operation progresses, Stasi Captain Wiesler (M?he) discovers compassion in his stony soul.

My Review:

In the early days of modern entertainment, cinema was a new and exciting method of being amused. In those days, German filmmakers were among the most pioneering, innovative and interesting, with classic silent features like Metropolis, Nosferatu and The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. However, a lot has occurred between then and now and the country has undergone a long period of troubled history.

This compelling, if not brilliant, masterpiece is European film-making at its finest and proof of an exciting renaissance in German cinema, proof that it has never lost its touch and sense of appeal. It's apparent why The Lives Of Others is this years Oscar winner for Best Foreign Language Film. This piece focuses on the inevitable human tragedy at the heart of a paranoid political regime that treats everyone as a potential enemy. It contrasts the administrations success to the demising sight of a regime whose tight grip is in a chokehold around its own neck, forcing its best into exile or suicide. Where, a establishment thought it was venerating itself, has become obsessed and distrustful of its own members, it collapses on itself.

In the starting days of East Germany's Ministry for State Security - 'Stasi'- had many hundreds of thousands members, who for the most part where more 'informants', ordinary members of the public were coerced into spying on their friends, family and neighbours; most through blackmail, public infringement or fear of disappearing into a forgotten cell. Alternatively, like many followers, love for the Communist system, but perhaps it's not happenstance that this story begins in the 1984.

Our limelight focus is given to Georg Dreyman (Sebastian Koch), who played the German officer in dir. Paul Verhoeven's Black Book, with flowing locks and open-necked shirts has a charismatic air that encompasses him. Koch's Dreyman is the ocular opposite of Hauptmann Gerd Wiesler (Ulrich M?he), whose impassive attitude is the archetype of emotional repression. And a beautiful actress girlfriend (Martina Gedeck). The film inclusively revolves around the characters bearable outlook on each other, which are hopelessly intricate and bound together and yet they barely share a scene. Good example of this inability of tolerance is sitting in an empty attic, listening to bugging devices.

We get a slowly building picture that sneaks into Wiesler's exterior, as his attitude to his subject moves from disapproval to envy to compassion, a man who has sacrificed his personal life and lost a large part of it, all in service of his country that he has tried so eloquently in protecting. An adhering of his homeland and what he has had to given up. It's a truly memorable performance.

Verdict:

A very personal story, set against an magnanimous backdrop of politics and power games. Enlightening. 9/10.

Movie Review: ONE OF THE BEST
Summary: 5 Stars

One of the best recent films produced by German cinema. A subtle and sensitive production. I first saw the film in the cinema and was so impressed I bought the DVD.

Movie Review: FLORIAN HENCKEL VON DONNERSMARCK, OPUS 1
Summary: 5 Stars

***** 2006. Written and directed by Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck. Academy award in the Best Foreign Language Film of the Year category and three European Film awards (Best film, Screenwriter and Actor). East Germany, 1984. A member of the Stasi spies on a small group of artists and secretly intervene in their lives. You can store this DVD in your library just next to your copy of Francis Ford Coppola's The Conversation. Masterpiece.