The Lives of Others

Screening: Monday 15 September 2008

Germany 2006.
Director: Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck.
Starring: Ulrich Muhe, Martina Gedeck, Sebastian Koch.
Subtitles.
Certificate: 15. 137 minutes.

Synopsis

Set in East Berlin, and covering the period November 1984 to 1993, this is a fascinating insight into the lengths and depths that the East German government went to in order to monitor the lives of its population in the 80s. The Lives of Others focuses on a Stasi officer, Gerd Wiesler, who is instructed to get incriminating material on a writer, Georg Dreyman, by spying on Dreyman and his actress girlfriend, Christa-Maria, both intellectual stars in the former East Germany. This he does with his usual efficiency, but as he eavesdrops on their lives something strange happens to this cold and brutal official.

Notes

Most of the film’s drama comes from scenes involving two people, only one of whom knows what is going on, but therein lies irony as the concealment does not always occur for bad reasons but rather because of mistaken intentions. Can people commit bad acts with good motives, and vice versa?

From his first sighting of Christa-Maria performing in a play by Dreyman, one wonders if Wiesler, like others, has been smitten by her beauty. However, he does not appear disinclined to the surveillance task he is given, with another Stasi employee, and initially he files detailed reports of every movement and conversation in the couple’s apartment. Gradually, however, you realise that this man is reassessing his life through the couple’s lives and he begins to adapt his reports in order to ‘protect’ the couple from his superior and Minister Hempf who ordered the surveillance. At one stage when the apartment is searched by the Stasi, there is tension both in Dreyman and the listening Wiesler, both fearful of the discovery of a hidden typewriter.

Ulrich Muhe is brilliant as the Stasi man who, at the start of the film, is a sincere believer in socialism and the idea that all people are equal and need to be helped along the road to communism. He functions within an ideological straight-jacket.
An effective operative. In subtle ways Muhe reveals the transformation of his character - a stand out performance in a film full of strong performances.