The Lives of Others [Blu-ray] [2007] [US Import] [2006]

"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

1984 is an inauspicious date for the setting of this fine movie about the East German autocracy. Whereas films like 'Goodbye Lenin' inspired a trend of nostalgia (coined as OSTalgia) for the GDR, 'The Life of Others' paints a more realistic picture. In a thoughtful, humane work, Stasi captain Gerd Wiesler is given a surveillance mission to spy on playwright Georg Dreyman and his actress girlfriend Christa-Maria Sieland. Weisler is an unquestioning party loyalist and cog in the Stasi machinery who takes pleasure in his thorough and exacting approach to such a mission. A dilligent professional, he is certainly not a sadist, but simply an automaton who divests emotional responsibility in the careful pursuit of his work. There is a brilliant early scene at the theatre where he is given his mission. Sitting in the Gods you are made privvy to the global perspective of a surveillance expert, the professional pleasure in his cold assessment of the situation. However, in a plot with shades of Francis Ford Copolla's masterpiece The Conversation, he find himself slowly drawn to the couple and ultimately implicated in their fate. Although it could also be suggested that there is a hint of 'Rear Window' about the story, Weisler's gradual softening of perspective is less Hitchcock-style obsession or voyeurism but rather about a lonely man warmed vicariously by the live and loves of others (hence the title).

Georg and Christa-Maria's existence is one (un)governed by the senses, by friendship and romance. Their flat is warmly photographed as a haven of free expression, of literature, music and art. By contrast Weisler returns to his spartan appartment with only state propagandist television for company or entertainment. Furthermore, the soft warm tones of the couple's home is shown in stark opposition to Weisler's austere attic surveillance center, itself drained of almost all colour. Weisler chalks a map of the couples' flat on the bare floorboards of the gloomy attic, further illustrating his immersion in their lives but also his isolation from it. Brilliantly cast, Ulrich Mühe's Weisler has the emotionally fridgid and dispassionate features of a lobotomised Kevin Spacey. As his heart thaws, his expression softens in the subtlest of degrees, his marble eyes acquiring a human liquidity. In one scene, when Weisler weeps to the sound of Georg playing the piano, a tear erupts from his unchanged face as if the ice within him has melted. His emotional distance is also emphasised in another starkly lit scene in which Weisler has a brutally perfuntary encounter with a prostitute who makes it clear his time is on the meter. It's a understated masterpiece that - despite its sinister and ultimately tragic themes - doesn't resort to explicit violence or melodrama. It is also given levity by the subtlety of Ulrich Mühe's performance, and the humanity of the ending, which I won't spoil by divulging here.

This is an excellent film, but one cannot buy from Amazon UK with confidence because it does not state what region it sells from the UK outlet. The US outlet states that the release is region A only, i.e., it will not play on European Blu-Ray players, which are region B. Amazon should tidy up this aspect of classification of HD discs since they are losing sales to other online shops that have got their act together.