The Lives of Others
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Movie Reviews of The Lives of Others
Movie Review: 5 stars I'll not regret
Summary: 5 Stars
Having never heard of this movie a week ago, I stumbled onto it and am so thankful for dumb luck. It's not often I find myself obsessing over a movie rental but that's what happened here. 3 viewings and wanting more, at the very least I'll rent this again soon. In the end, I'll buy it on dvd. I wish I could have had a chance to see it in a theater. A quiet, textural movie filled with subtle shadings and emotional color where there is little visual color, The Lives of Others gets deeper every time you see it. You pick up on one more slight gesture or one more hint of something real.
I strongly recommend seeing it at least twice. Being subtitled, the first time you watch it you'll naturally be spending a fair amount of time reading it. Try as you might, you'll still miss certain aspects of the performances of these actors. Of special note is Wiesler...Ulrich Mühe... the quiet, ominous Stasi man. I don't question the performances of anyone else in the film, but for me, Ulrich Mühe is the one. This performance and the internal dialog of this character is riveting. He is a perfect book that you don't want to put down even though it's 4am and you have to be up in 3 hours. I've never been to acting school, I haven't seen much theater, and I've never tried to make a movie... heck I've never owned a video camera, but Mühe meets my own personal definition of genius when it comes to acting. I don't even perceive him as acting... I watch this film and I perceive him as being. As IS.
This is my favorite new movie I've seen in quite some time. Whereas the last movie I reviewed (Electric Shadows) touched me in a way I can only describe as engaging sentimentality, The Lives of Others is the opposite, and a much stronger film in every way. If someone didn't like Shadows, I could understand that. They'd probably be disliking the very things I liked. This movie though, it's tough for me to think of any adult not being drawn into it.
With no sentimentality or feeling of being forced, Others manages to move along with a stoic tenacity where, possibly, one may see that art need not imitate life when it can rise above it.
Movie Review: Living in totalitarian system
Summary: 5 Stars
Recently there have been some great movies about WWII, but it has been a while since we saw a movie about the cold war era depicting every day lives of ordinary people in the Eastern block. The last film I recall was adaptation of Milan Kundera's book "The Unbearable Lightness of Being". "The Lives of Others" film is the perfect display of the kinds of people who suffer the most in the totalitarian system(s) - artists, professors and students - people generally considered as too liberal in their view of the world. In order to preserve the privilege of being able to work at all and create as an actors, directors, writers, these individuals have to either repress their true feelings about the system they live in, or pretend that the cruelty of the system isn't there. This may be the only film that I recall that addresses the issue of routine sexual coercion women in eastern block have to face in such society by man in powerful positions. I saw this movie in the theatre and could not help myself but hear deep sighs and expressions of disbelief of having to experience the harrasment, eavesdropping, phone monitoring. But anyone who lived in Eastern Europe knows very well that these were (and still are) common practices. What is even more frightening is that they exist even today, in the same if not worse form particularly in the Eastern European countries. And while today's monitoring devices, and miniature cameras are certainly less conspicuous, it is the technology of 20 years ago that makes audience more aware of how brutal these practices are no matter which decades they take place in. No, I am not going to tell you the synopsis of this movie because it would spoil it all. But young 32 year old director of this film has captured the essence of what it is to live in the repressive systems and be (un)willing part of it. It also gives hope that art can wake up the most human sensibilities in all of us no matter what our moral convictions are. However, the transforming power of art, or change in general for that matter, always comes at the steep price. Is it worth to pay such high price? You must see the movie to make that decision yourself. This DVD is keeper - movie is destined to be a classic.Movie Review: A tale of self discovery, and change
Summary: 5 Stars
There are 2 movies that in my mind are without a doubt the best films of 2006: "Letters from Iwo Jima" and "The Lives of Others". By far not the popular choices in their categories, those being "The Departed" and "Pan's Labyrinth", but also by far the best stories, and the better told ones as well.
I will not describe the movie plot, other reviewers have done a fair job of it already. What I will restate is that without a doubt Ulrich Mühe steals the show. His acting is precise and believable to the point that it's obvious there is a devotion to his character that borders on the personal. An amazing performance. One wonders if he himself is not truly a reformed Stasi now acting for a living.
The film itself is less a tale of East Germany, or of oppression. You would believe that if you didn't see past the surface of the story. It's more a story about the human condition, about goodness, about the fact that good people exist, and people can change to become one. In this way, the film is filled with foreshadowing script... We first hear how "people don't change", but the artist, the writer (Sebastian Koch) is a believer of the opposite, and so his plays show this (and therefore the movie does as well). We also hear how if you are able to experience the beauty of music and indeed feel it for yourself, you must be in essence a good person... and thus the inevitable transformation of the protagonist ensues.
This story, in spite of being drama, is about hope, about love, about goodness and about life... and how in the presence of all of this the good in people prevails no matter what their prejudice may have been.
With regards to another reviewer's comment about Pan's Labyrinth deserving the Oscar over this film. I must disagree. This film relied solely on the strength of the story, its characters and its acting. Where the story told by Pan's Labyrinth relies at times on cliche, and is heavy on needing visuals to entice you further, I believe you could read the script for the "Lives of Others" and still be mesmerized, only to then be further blown away by the acting in the movie. Superb.
Movie Review: "To know everything."
Summary: 5 Stars
For all the shock over its win, The Lives of Others certainly deserves its Best Foreign Film Oscar. If it doesn't work its way into my favourites the way that Pan's Labyrinth did, it's still one of the best films of 2006, with a more quiet, uneasy power to it.
Opening with a literal textbook interrogation that underlines the way that in a police state that is determined "To know everything," you simply end up fearing everything and feeling little - even the Stasi keep notes on each other in a society where the wrong question can mark your career before it has even started - its strength often lies in the little practical minutiae of daily life. It's not a film with many big dramatic moments, more an accumulation of detail that draws you into the situation and the characters' lives just as the late Ulrich Mühe's eavesdropper is slowly drawn into the lives of the actress (coveted by a party official using the secret police to clear the way for him) and her playwright lover who believes people can change in a system that believes people never can to fill in the void in his own ordered existence. Thankfully, it's not a humourless film, even if there's a darkness waiting behind the laughs in the canteen scene that only pays off near the end or the brief but brilliant elevator scene that drew almost as big a gasp of horror from the audience as that moment in Hidden/Cache. It also dares to show how, in their different ways, the characters all manage to almost thrive in a repressive regime - especially the favoured but suspected writer who, without socialism to rebel against after the Wall goes down, finds he has nothing to write about.
Interesting to note that the three male leads are all played by actors from Costa Gavras' Amen, all looking very different here. It's not too difficult to see how the inevitable Hollywood remake should shake up - Stanley Tucci should be a lock for the lead, Tom Hanks the playwright with Kevin Spacey rounding out the trio as the politically ambitious, morally flexible boss. Somehow I doubt it'll be as quietly moving as this beautifully crafted little gem.
Movie Review: "What is a director that cannot direct?"
Summary: 5 Stars
"The lives of others" (= "Das leben der anderen") is a wonderful film directed by Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, that won the Oscar for Best Foreign Film. Truth to be told, I hadn't heard his name before, but I'm certain that I won't forget it now. This film, his debut as a director, is simply exceptional. An engaging political thriller, this movie is at the same time a complex study regarding the power of choices, and the way we behave when faced to our worst fears.
The story is set in East Germany in 1984, when the lack of freedom and the zeal of the Secret Police (Stasi) were pervasive. Captain Gerd Wiesler (Ulrich Mühe) is an agent that specializes in discovering "traitors", that is, those that don't agree with everything that the government says. Wiesler is very good at his job, and has no mercy for those that don't add up to his ideal of what a good socialist should be.
That is probably the reason why his superior assigns him the task of of spying on Georg Dreyman (Sebastian Koch), a well-known socialist playwright that is nonetheless suspicious, due to his friends. Dreyman lives with his girlfriend, Christa-Maria Sieland (Martina Gedeck), a talented actress that loves him but has sexual trysts with a powerful government official that promises her that she will never be in the black list of artist that cannot work.
As Wiesler learns more about the couple, thanks to the hidden microphones his team installed in their apartment, he starts warming towards them. He even protects them when Dreyman becomes actively involved in "subversive" activities, as a reaction to the suicide of a friend that had been blacklisted. But how far will Wiesler risk himself? And can human beings really change?
Strangely enough, "The lives of others" tackles those difficult questions in a manner that leaves nothing to be desired, and makes you think almost involuntarily about many more that have to do with them. On the whole, I must say that I cannot recommend this film strongly enough. Please don't miss it...
Belen Alcat, May 2007