The Lives of Others
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Movie Reviews of The Lives of Others
Movie Review: The Survival of the Individual Under the Cloud of Totalitarianism
Summary: 5 Stars
Das Leben der Anderen (The Live of Others) is a powerful film that opens a window to the West of what life was like in East Germany during the time of the Berlin Wall. It is a tense yet balanced work by newcomer writer and director Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck who manages to present a tense story of espionage, suspense, intrigue, and political danger without the need for car chases, explosions, gunfire, or any of the usual accoutrements that pulse through other stories of this nature. Instead von Donnersmarck shows us the interior lives of his characters, both those working with the East German government and Secret Police and those who struggled to survive individuality. One of the primary jobs of the Secret Police (Stasi) was to spy on informers and those who would leak information about East Germany to the West. One fact that was kept under lock and key was the high rate of suicide, especially among artists who could not bear the crushing eye of the Eastern police, that would be devastating information if leaked into the press of the West: this forms the nidus for the story of this film.
It is 1984 and one agent - Captain Gerd Wiesler (Ulrich Mühe - who sadly died in July 2007 of stomach cancer) is assigned the duty of spying on popular playwright Georg Dreyman (Sebastian Koch) and his live-in girlfriend, brilliant actress Christa-Maria Sieland (Martina Gedeck). Dreyman is a friend of blacklisted director Albert Jerska (Volkmar Kleinert) and when Jerska commits suicide Dreyman feels compelled to get in the information to the West into a popular magazine in hopes that action will be taken. Wiesler alters his spying routine when he discovers that the Stasi official to whom he reports has different designs on Georg and Christa-Maria and his spirit shifts subtly in support of the artists. It is this inner struggle within Wiesler that alters the manner in which his spying information is reported and Wiesler's courageous deeds alter the Stasi plans to destroy the artists' venture. The manner in which Wiesler interplays with the Stasi and covers for the artists is a towering example of the dignity of the individual human soul threatened by the worst of circumstances. The results of Wiesler's decisions alter with the fall of the Wall in 1989 in a deeply touching yet very subtle way.
The technical aspects of this film - cinematography, pacing, lighting, editing, and the splendid musical scored by Gabriel Yared - are as fine as any film created by seasoned directors. The manner in which von Donnersmarck keeps every actor focused on the inner personality, as much by body language and silences as well as by dialogue, is astonishingly fine. This is a fascinating story, told with elegant understatement and most worthy of the Oscar for Best Foreign Film. Highly Recommended. Grady Harp, August 07
Movie Review: The Survival of the Individual Under the Cloud of Totalitarianism
Summary: 5 Stars
DAS LEBEN DER ANDEREN (The Live of Others) is a powerful film that opens a window to the West of what life was like in East Germany during the time of the Berlin Wall. It is a tense yet balanced work by newcomer writer and director Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck who manages to present a tense story of espionage, suspense, intrigue, and political danger without the need for car chases, explosions, gunfire, or any of the usual accoutrements that pulse through other stories of this nature. Instead von Donnersmarck shows us the interior lives of his characters, both those working with the East German government and Secret Police and those who struggled to survive individuality. One of the primary jobs of the Secret Police (Stasi) was to spy on informers and those who would leak information about East Germany to the West. One fact that was kept under lock and key was the high rate of suicide, especially among artists who could not bear the crushing eye of the Eastern police, that would be devastating information if leaked into the press of the West: this forms the nidus for the story of this film.
It is 1984 and one agent - Captain Gerd Wiesler (Ulrich Mühe) is assigned the duty of spying on popular playwright Georg Dreyman (Sebastian Koch) and his live-in girlfriend, brilliant actress Christa-Maria Sieland (Martina Gedeck). Dreyman is a friend of blacklisted director Albert Jerska (Volkmar Kleinert) and when Jerska commits suicide Dreyman feels compelled to get in the information to the West into a popular magazine in hopes that action will be taken. Wiesler alters his spying routine when he discovers that the Stasi official to whom he reports has different designs on Georg and Christ-Maria and his spirit shifts subtly in support of the artists. It is this inner struggle within Wiesler that alters the manner in which his spying information is reported and Wiesler's courageous deeds alter the Secret Police plans to destroy the artists' venture. The manner in which Weisler interplays with the Stasi and covers for the artists is a towering example of the dignity of the individual human soul threatened by the worst of circumstances. The results of Weisler's decisions alter with the fall of the Wall in 1989 in a deeply touching yet very subtle way.
The technical aspects of this film - cinematography, pacing, lighting, editing, and the splendid musical scored my Gabriel Yared - are as fine as any film created by seasoned directors. The manner in which von Donnersmarck keeps every actor focused on the inner personality, as much by body language and silences as well as by dialogue, is astonishingly fine. This is a fascinating story, told with elegant understatement and most worthy of the Oscar for Best Foreign Film. Highly Recommended. Grady Harp, March 07
Movie Review: The Drone
Summary: 5 Stars
Gerd Weisler (Ulrich Muhe, appropriately drab) is an East German Stasi (Secret Police) drone: the type of man that his superiors count on to "get" his prey. Early on in this fascinating, superior film, Gerd arrives home from a hard day of spying on his fellow East Germans and prepares a meal: microwaved white rice onto which he squeezes tomato paste from a tube. This scene, in its spare, workmanlike manner sets the course and adjusts the sights of this film: the unremarkable, out of hate and jealousy assigned to bring down those deemed different, those deemed remarkable, those deemed talented. Weisler is the perfect Stasi automaton: a socialist monk with ice-cold eyes and an incorruptible true believer's faith in the system he has sworn to defend against "enemies of socialism" no matter where he finds them.
"The Lives of Others" begins in 1984 a particularly Orwellian date and 5 years before the fall of the Berlin Wall, Weisler is invited to a night of theater by his school friend and boss Colonel Grubitz (a slimy bureaucrat performance by Ulrich Tukor) for a performance of a play written by Georg Dreyman (Sebastian Koch) and starring Dreyman's live in girlfriend, Christa-Maria Sieland (Martina Gedeck from "Mostly Martha"). Dreyman is tall, handsome, dresses in colors other than grey and Christa-Maria is wondrously gorgeous and a great actress to boot.
As Weisler watches Christa-Maria on stage he also scopes in on Dreyman, via his opera binoculars, watching Christa-Maria with love and admiration. The look of distrust and envy in Wailer's eyes is frightening: his eyes widen, squint and widen again. What does Weisler see or sense on that triumphant, for Dreyman and Sieland, night? Is it watching them basking in the glory of an audience's love and appreciation? Is it the palpable love and warmth between the two themselves: something that Weisler has never, will never feel? Whatever it is, Weisler has found his next assignment.
Though Dreyman is deemed "the only writer we have who is not subversive," Weisler forces the issue and sets up a full Stasi surveillance: bugs, cameras and sets up a roost for himself in the attic of the Dreyman-Sieland home.
Then in the process of spying on these two warm, happy, talented, loving people something happens to Weisler: he slowly, through the ugly process of spying, thaws little by little: Weisler falls in love with them and more to the point.., he falls in love with their lives.
First time director, Florien Hinkle von Donnersmarck has produced a remarkable, involving, intelligent film: an intricate, frightening film full of lives caught at the difficult crossroads of patriotism on the one hand and on the other the vortex of individual duty and honor.
Movie Review: The Drone
Summary: 5 Stars
Gerd Weisler (Ulrich Muhe, appropriately drab) is an East German Stasi (Secret Police) drone: the type of man that his superiors count on to "get" his prey. Early on in this fascinating, superior film, Gerd arrives home from a hard day of spying on his fellow East Germans and prepares a meal: microwaved white rice onto which he squeezes tomato paste from a tube. This scene, in its spare, workmanlike manner sets the course and adjusts the sights of this film: the unremarkable, out of hate and jealousy assigned to bring down those deemed different, those deemed remarkable, those deemed talented. Weisler is the perfect Stasi automaton: a socialist monk with ice-cold eyes and an incorruptible true believer's faith in the system he has sworn to defend against "enemies of socialism" no matter where he finds them.
"The Lives of Others" begins in 1984 a particularly Orwellian date and 5 years before the fall of the Berlin Wall, Weisler is invited to a night of theater by his school friend and boss Colonel Grubitz (a slimy bureaucrat performance by Ulrich Tukor) for a performance of a play written by Georg Dreyman (Sebastian Koch) and starring Dreyman's live in girlfriend, Christa-Maria Sieland (Martina Gedeck from "Mostly Martha"). Dreyman is tall, handsome, dresses in colors other than grey and Christa-Maria is wondrously gorgeous and a great actress to boot.
As Weisler watches Christa-Maria on stage he also scopes in on Dreyman, via his opera binoculars, watching Christa-Maria with love and admiration. The look of distrust and envy in Wailer's eyes is frightening: his eyes widen, squint and widen again. What does Weisler see or sense on that triumphant, for Dreyman and Sieland, night? Is it watching them basking in the glory of an audience's love and appreciation? Is it the palpable love and warmth between the two themselves: something that Weisler has never, will never feel? Whatever it is, Weisler has found his next assignment.
Though Dreyman is deemed "the only writer we have who is not subversive," Weisler forces the issue and sets up a full Stasi surveillance: bugs, cameras and sets up a roost for himself in the attic of the Dreyman-Sieland home.
Then in the process of spying on these two warm, happy, talented, loving people something happens to Weisler: he slowly, through the ugly process of spying, thaws little by little: Weisler falls in love with them and more to the point.., he falls in love with their lives.
First time director, Florien Hinkle von Donnersmarck has produced a remarkable, involving, intelligent film: an intricate, frightening film full of lives caught at the difficult crossroads of patriotism on the one hand and on the other the vortex of individual duty and honor.
Movie Review: To All The Unknown HGW XX/7 - You Were the Real Heroes
Summary: 5 Stars
Hypocrisy, malice, and corruption.
Abuse of privelege, power, and responsibility.
This couldn't possibly describe the government of the German Democratic Republic.
If the East German press was to be believed, the people of the GDR were the luckiest people on earth. They were the envy of the world - they lived in an idyllic paradise under the caring and (ever so) watchful eye of "President" Erich Honecker and his State Security apparatus, the Stasi. So good was life in the GDR that it was a catastrophic tragedy when the Berlin Wall came down in 1989. Countless millions of "true" Germans in that moment lost everything.
But that is propaganda. The truth is that in that moment, the only people to lose anything were those in power. For the countless "Ossies" who worked quietly against the regime, the fall of the Berlin Wall was the moment when these unsung heroes gained everything.
We now know (to the everlasting shame of Western Socialism/Liberalism) that life in East Germany wasn't at all like the State's press releases. Life wasn't a paradise of endless choices; instead, a person born into the GDR was given only two unenviable choices: "play by the rules" and lose one's soul or fight against the inhumanity of the regime and most likely lose one's life. In either case, one could expect the Stasi to be intimately involved.
"The Lives of Others" is a movie that focuses on a writer, an actress, an interrogator policeman (HGW XX/7), an opportunistic civil servant, and a pig of a government official. The movie describes "Operation Lazlo" ("OV Lazlo"), a surveillance operation that takes place over approximately six months. "OV Lazlo" is a corrupt operation from the start and it is the moral bankruptcy of the operation that over time causes HGW XX/7 to truly see what he had been so patriotically, though robotically, defending. At great risk, HGW XX/7 decides to take a stand, though small it might be. In the end, and at great loss to the writer, the actress, and HGW XX/7, the interrogator policeman's actions result in the eventual restoration of their dignity and courage.
"The Lives of Others" is a sublime masterpiece. Having served on the East German border during the Cold War, I can attest to the cruelty and blatant lies of the GDR's propaganda machine. "The Lives of Others" gave me a glimpse of those unsung heroes (like HGW XX/7) I always hoped were there. It is no longer a hope, I now know they were there doing what they could.
Was kann ich sagen? Sie sind der wahre Held des Kalten Krieges. Ich möchte Sie irgendwann treffen und hört Ihre Geschichte. Ihre Stimme verdient, gehört zu werden. Bravo!