MUBI

Growing up in Reagan’s America, we pitied those who were living behind the so-called “iron curtain.” We spoke of our freedom and democracy as people who know only what has always been.

THE LIVES OF OTHERS gives us a glimpse behind that storied curtain—twenty years or so after the fact—and in doing so, reveals a passion for free expression…for a life lived without state-sponsored oppression, that neither I nor any of my freedom-loving, American neighbors could have possibly known.

East German artists in the 1970s and 80s served at the pleasure of the state. The state monitored their artists—both publicly and privately—to keep tabs on how pleasing an artist’s behavior was.

In the film, an acclaimed playwright abides his benevolent keepers. Lives in relative peace with them. Until…his actress girlfriend becomes a person of increasing state suspicion. And it is here, under the oppressive monitor of the state, that their lives are forever changed.

With, perhaps, the most satisfying ending in recent cinema history, THE LIVES OF OTHERS fascinates and compels at every turn. It is a deeply human film. One that may be, in fact, the most accomplished first feature since Orson Welles’ CITIZEN KANE.

His name is Ulrich Muhe. The director (Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck) says he is Germany’s best actor. For this film he could very well be the best actor in the world. A performance of such profound haunting human honesty it makes others seem like playacting. Wiesler—his Stazi investigator (East Berlin secret police) before the wall fell—is a devout patriot. A man who enforces the terror of communism with zeal. But when he sets his sights on a playwright of questionable loyalty—his faith crumbles under the privilege of spying on a good man, a real artist, who exposes him inadvertently to the first real art of his life. As he overhears a life truly lived he becomes besotted with the playwright’s wife, a beautiful actress, his troubled questing words, the music he plays, his need to get his truth out to the west. It is as if he had discovered the secret of life—a secret so precious he can tell no one. And ironically it is the world he lives in that is exposed as a corrupt, grey, mundane nightmare. It is an extraordinary film about the little choices we make, the choices that make us who we are.

More Baddaboom Reviews:

http://web.me.com/paddybon/Site/My_favorite_flicks.html

I agree that it is beautifully paced. you have the opportunity to sink into the film and become involved in (to be quite frank) the lives of others. the stark contrast between the very non-human lifeless captain, a figure entirely void of love and art, and the vivid witness of the fearful but brave playwright makes it quite emotionally powerful while making political, humanitarian, and art statements. what i loved most about the film was the not the history and political expo shown, but the illustration of the artist as a beacon of truth, a social reformer, a warning to the wayward ways of man, a lone voice shouting against convention and society. whether faced with death or mere trivial confrontation, the artist is called to be bold, unafraid, convicted, prolific, and outside the confines of time and space. Combine all of this with a beautiful slice of human emotion and valid connectivity and you have what is in my opinion a very good film.

Many people were startled by the fact that Pan’s Labyrinth lost the Best Foreign Film Oscar to its fellow nominee The Lives of Others. Granted, many hadn’t seen the German film yet, however, I think the push that the Spanish fantasy had, while also taking a few technical Oscars in the process, surprised a lot of people. The shock led to numerous movie folk on the internet describing the voting process for that award, how a select group, not the entire Academy, screens the foreign films. Therefore many thought that this more dramatic and adult story was chosen because that group was probably a very pretentious bunch and couldn’t in their right mind vote a fantasy film as a winner above it. Whether this is true or not, Buffalo now has the opportunity to see the award winning film for itself, to decide if it was deserving or not. I must say, while I don’t think it was better than Pan’s I am totally fine with the fact that it won. The Lives of Others is an expertly told thriller, tense throughout, as we never quite know what our protagonist or antagonist will do, or even if they are on opposite sides of the movie’s coin to begin with.

We begin the movie with an introduction to Hauptmann Wiesler, (played perfectly by Ulrich Mühe, who you might know from Haneke’s original Funny Games), a member of the Stasi who is teaching a class on the tactics of an interrogation, and how you must show no remorse when trying to find out enemies to the State. An old friend of his, who has since risen in the ranks of the government faction more for greed than actually wanting to do right by his superiors, tells him about a new surveillance job that has come up straight from the Minister himself. Wiesler, always a man willing to do what is necessary for the cause he believes in, takes the job and begins watching the accused man’s every move. Soon, though, he realizes that this man, while having friends of those with Western loyalties, keeps clean himself when it comes to politics of that persuasion. Instead Wiesler finds that his subject’s live-in girlfriend is having an affair, with the Minister no less. This is not a stakeout to find an enemy; his assignment is one to get rid of a man so that his superior may have a woman all to himself. Disillusionment sets in and Wiesler begins to put a series of events into place that only he knows what he wants the result to be. Does he want to punish the Minister for using his power for selfish gains? Or does he want to prove to everyone that he knows what his job is and will show everyone the power he himself wields.

There are some really fantastic moments throughout the film showing the eventually demise of the GDR. Mühe is fantastic as Wiesler and shows his changing opinions and confusion in what it is he is does for the Stasi. What was once a job for the continuation of socialism in East Germany has become a tool of the leaders to use against their people. When Wiesler and his boss friend go to lunch and he sits at a table of lesser rank than his own, his friend says how the captains sit in the back. Wiesler’s response of how socialism must start somewhere is so true and biting that his friend can only smirk. These leaders no longer work for the common good of all men, they have received power and they now intend to keep it. From this point on you never can tell which side Wiesler is truly working on.

Mühe is not the only great performance of the film, although his calm stoicism and hidden emotion truly carry it. The subject of his mission, Georg Dreyman, a playwright, is wonderfully done by Sebastian Koch. This role is of a man who has seen his politically outspoken friends be punished for voicing their opinions, and has, as a result, decided to not follow suit. Only when his mentor commits suicide does Dreyman finally decide to do something about the stifling regime in power and help the West see the growing dissent in the East. His girlfriend, actress Christa-Maria Sieland, is also portrayed with raw emotion by Martina Gedeck. She is caught between love and survival and has gotten herself too deep in both to be able to leave one for the other. Her part is hard to watch because she tries so hard to keep both halves of her life living in harmony, but being too tired and broken to keep the charade going.

I will again say that I really enjoyed this film. The story was intelligently told and professionally acted and directed. I was on the edge of my seat throughout, waiting to see what Wiesler’s true intentions were. If the film would have ended at its logical finishing mark, I may have put it in my top ten of 2007. However, what was a fascinating tale of two men slowly realizing their beliefs were incorrect and because of which decide to take the dangerous challenge of doing something about it, becomes a history lesson about the fall of the Berlin Wall. It was the concentrated focus that enthralled me, and once a series of epilogues (2 years later, etc…) were tacked on the end, I was totally taken out of the intimacy of the movie. The final shot ends up being so clichéd and safe that, while appropriate, it ends up subverting the rest of the movie’s keep-you-guessing mentality. Some things are best left up to the audience’s imagination, and a final crossing of paths between the watcher and the subject need not be spelled out.