The Lives of Others
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Movie Reviews of The Lives of Others
Movie Review: Life under Stasi oppression in East Germany
Summary: 5 Stars
Set in East Germany durign the closing years of the Cold War, a playwright runs afoul of the government and is subjected to surveillance. Georg Dreymon is a playwright who manages to stay in business by writing plays that conform to the socialist propaganda of the East German government. All is lost when a bureaucrat decides to move in on Dreymon's girlfriend, a prominent actress.
Despite his absolute innocense, Dreymon must be "removed", and a Stasi agent assigned to spy on him.
However, the Stasi agent assigned takes a completely unexpected course of action...
While we in America are subjected to such cinematic feces as "Dude, Wheres my Car?", or "American Pie", Europe is still making films that mean something. This is one of them.
Its a German film, and it will likely lose the attention of Ashton Kutcher fans within 5 minutes, because its not in English. They are a lost cause anyway. American viewers with a bit more cerebral matter will pay close attention. Why? The events portrayed in this film will soon be common place in America, if you DON'T pay attention.
The posers currently occupying the White House are encouraging citizens to report anyone who opposes the pharoah's "health-care plan".
Speak to anyone from the former East Germany, and you will hear tales of a ruthless regime. East Germany had such a thorough hold on the people, that there was very nearly at least one informant in every family, by some estimates.
The reason for such severe surveillance was probably due to the fact that East Germany directly bordered the free Western NATO countries, namely West Germany. The communists in power realized that despite all their efforts, it was not possible to hide the freedom and better quality of life in the West. Too many East Germans had easy access to television and radio broadcasts from all points West, for one thing.
Of all the Warsaw Pact nations under the heal of the Soviet Union, East Germans were suppressed by the most thorough and ruthless secret-police that the Iron-Curtain could muster. No secret-police force ever kept as vast a network of informants as the Stasi. After the collapse of communism, citizens of East Germany were given free access to all the files kept on them. People were shocked to find that wives, husbands, relatives, friends, and co-workers had "informed" upon them for years! Electronic bugs were emplaced almost everywhere. In fact, people who had been arrested by the Stasi, and interrogated, had sweat-samples taken from them. This would be used at a later time, if the individual became a fugitive. The tracking dogs would be given the "olfactory sample", to chase down the fugitive.
Movie Review: SOZIALISTEN REALPOLITIK
Summary: 5 Stars
This is a film about the socialist notion of social engineering, and those who know best of all, the artistic set, that the soul is not engineered but is a growing thing that is fed when it hungers and given water when it thirsts. Consequently, individuals are what socialism fears most, and must oppose until reality bites and the real people who are not cloned engineered things finally rebel. And so it is that the artists, (and the priests, and the peace activists), are the most surveilled of all people in the socialist state of East Germany, just a few years before the Berlin Wall was pulled down in 1989.
The key player is a tragic and lonely figure, a middle-high ranking Stasi (secret police) official who is a trainer of interrogators. There is a fascinating scene where he gives a lecture on how to tell whether a suspect is lying -- this in a state based and maintained on untruth. However, it is hard to like this poor fellow who has sold his soul for slightly better standard of GDR life and the privilige of being the spy rather than the spied upon. The whole film is subtexted by the stifled cry for freedom that emanates from the silent sufferers of communism. The artists are the muffled voice of the sufferers, and hence the supposed faithful socialist playwright who is the last of the artists to not be surveilled must also be monitored. After all, if he is a real playwright, he cannot be an 'engineer of the soul', a boilerplate writer. For there is no such thing: Lenin's metaphor of making people out of dead metal is a false metaphor, false and cold like his philosophy.
The Stasi spy too is lonely and cold of heart. The playwright is full of life and enjoys his relationships to the full. The Stasi spy looks on in envy at the literature the playwright enjoys (Brecht), at the actress who is his lover, and compares them in his heart to the state-provided prostitute he must enjoy for a few minutes, and the blank walls of his apartment. To his eternal credit he finds that he likes these warm-hearted subversives, and, when they do finally become outrightly subversive, he not only does not report them, but actively protects them.
The drama heightens around the writing of not a play, but an article for the West German magazine 'Stern', on the state-of-the-nation exposé concerning the frightening suicide rate in the GDR. The playwrights friend is one of the many to kill himself and go unrecorded as a suicide. The Socialist state has statistics on everything except suicide, which they stopped recording seven years before in 1977. Eventually your sins do find you out, and you will pay the price.
Movie Review: you can feel the oppressiveness of the system
Summary: 5 Stars
What a powerful movie. I felt the oppressiveness of the system from the movie in a way that i haven't seen since reading Solzhenitsyn's "The Gulag Archipelago". I don't know how anyone survived those decades, let alone how any normal human contact was possible. I wonder even more how anyone in the system like the major character could move from a position of responsibility for interrogations to actively supporting a writer who writes a damning article about suicides in East Germany.
The plot of the movie is actually rather straightforward and linear.
A playwright, a supporter of the regime has a beautiful lover, who is a well known actress.
She is blackmailed into a sexual liaison by a high ranking party member using his threats to end her career or worse.
The official decides to get rid of the playwright-boyfriend using information gained from surveillance by the Stasi on their apartment.
(so far sounds pretty much like David and Bathsheba, she who was the wife of Uriah)
The agent assigned to the case, listens into the lives. While at the same time figures out with his immediate superior that they are being used by the official to further his sexual agenda.
What happens next is that the agent covers up for the playwright's underground activities by submitting false reports that they are involved only in writing a new play, while they are actually moving towards more active resistance to the government.
But the movie isn't about the plot, it is about the character development, in all four major players.
the Stasi supervisor, the agent, the playwright and the actress-girlfriend.
And how the system changes, distorts or reinforces each of their beliefs.
The most interesting one is the agent's movement from a loyal player to a subverter of the system. What are his motivations? are they believable? how far will he go to protect these two people? will he get caught?
it feels like a gripping detective story with lives on the line, with a huge rock ready to drop on anyone of them and poof--into prison.
It is how they adapt to the pressures, how they continue to live with themselves and with their friends that forms the background for the character development.
i love books.
therefore i really liked the ending.
i hope things like this occurred in East Germany, and continue to occur in all those places in the world that are not free to speak their minds and think their own thoughts, in private, and to speak them in public.
thanks to the movie for a thrilling and thought provoking ride.
Movie Review: Absolutely compelling and thought provoking
Summary: 5 Stars
I must confess I went into seeing "The Lives of Others" with some apprehension. I didn't know much about it other than that spying was involved. Much to my surprise, I left the theatre glad that I had gone to see the Oscar winning film.
The story of "The Lives of Others" takes place in 1984 in East Berlin, when both Germanys were still separated by the wall as well as politics. Ulrich Muhe plays Hauptmann Gerd Wiesler, a member of the Stasi. He is hired to spy on Georg Dreyman (Sebastian Koch) for suspicious activities. In the beginning of the film Wiesler is portrayed as a cold, calculating, loyal member of the Stasi who does not question the authority of the Stasi or government. As the film progresses on, the more Wiesler observes his subject and his gorgeous girlfriend Christa-Maria Siedland (Martina Gedeck), I began to slight changes in Wiesler's demeanor. Life begins to appear in Wiesler's eyes after years of working as a member of the Stasi. These changes eventually effects Wiesler's assignment and he makes choices that drastically alters both his subject's and his own life.
I was so impressed that this was the movie debut of director Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck. The details Florian went into to portray life in East Germany prior to the wall coming down was so well thought out. Although the story is fictional, Florian did an amazing job at portraying life in communist East Germany as accurate as possible. For a film that was almost 2.5 hrs long, I thought time flew by for me. The performances were so well done. For me, Ulrich Muhe is the star of the film. Seeing his personality change ever so slightly through out the film was so compelling to watch. Seeing him change from being so cold to so vulnerable was quite heartbreaking especially his scenes with Martina Gedeck. Not many actresses today are able to convince me of their character's vulnerability and anguish but Martina Gedeck succeeds where most actresses fails for me. Her performance as Christa-Maria was tremendous with her subtle,nuanced skills as an actress.
There honestly wasn't anything about "The Lives of Others" that I did not like. The writing was excellent. It did not insult the filmgoer's intelligence with bad diaogue and over the top action sequences. The filmmaker relied more on suspense and character development. Everyone's performances were wonderful. Now if only filmmakers from this country could do as good of a job as Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck. They could learn a lot from this newcomer on how to make a film that doesn't insult the filmgoer's intelligence.
Movie Review: Powerful and Personal Political Drama.
Summary: 5 Stars
"The Lives of Others" brilliantly captures the fault in societies in which citizens have no protection against their governments by weaving a story of ambition, betrayal, and redemption around wiretapping in Cold War East Germany. In 1984, the Stasi, or East German Secret Police, intend to know everything about every citizen and are free to accuse and imprison without evidence in the defense of the Socialist State. A staunch proponent of these values, Captain Wiesler (Ulrich Muhe) is assigned by his career-minded superior Lt. Colonel Grubitz (Ulrich Tukur) to wiretap the apartment of playwright Georg Dreyman (Sebastian Koch). The Operation is instigated by a powerful politician, Minister Hempf (Thomas Thieme), who desires Dreyman's actress girlfriend Christa-Maria Sieland (Martina Gedeck).
"The Lives of Others" depicts a touchy subject in recent German history, as hundreds of thousands of people in the GRD acted as informers for the Stasi. The film takes on a different significance in the post-9/11 United States, this era of warrantless wiretaps and extensive surveillance. It reminds me of Francis Ford Coppola's exceptional film "The Conversation", also about the effects of wiretapping on a surveillant and his subjects, released on the heels of the Watergate scandal in 1974. The torment of living under a security-obsessed regime comes across powerfully in "The Lives of Others". But no less powerful is the film's exploration of the economics of paranoia, when power substitutes for accomplishment and petty ambition masquerades as idealism. "The Lives of Others" is a beautifully crafted, personal, suspenseful story with rapier political insight. In German with subtitles.
The DVD (Sony 2007): There are 7 deleted scenes with optional director's commentary. "Interview with Director Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck" (30 min) is informative. The director discusses his inspiration for the film, research on life in the GRD, the cast, creating a visually engaging environment, the score, and themes. In English. "The Making of The Lives of Others" (20 min) is a German production, with subtitles, that interviews the director, cast, and producers about the film's depiction of recent history, achieving authenticity, and some of the subjects mentioned above. There is an English director's commentary by von Donnersmarck which covers some of the same material as his interview, talks about production design, the actors, story structure, characters, and takes us through the film. Subtitles are available for the film in English, French, and Spanish.