The Lives of Others - Review
Review by Gerald Levy
THE Lives of Others is a German film about the activities of the notorious Stasi, the secret police in the German ‘Democratic’ Republic which subsisted in North East Germany between 1949 and 1989.
Until 1945 its inhabitants had been expected to be loyal Nazis; after 1949 they were expected to be loyal communists. Russian-controlled, austere, devastated and poor, the country was an unviable artificial construct, to which many found it difficult to be loyal, and which many desired to leave.
The Stasi was at once a response to this discontent, and, by its repressive methods, the cause of further alienation.
This film, which has won clusters of prizes, including the 2007 Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film, portrays the Stasi’s methods. Rather glossy and warm in spirit, it oddly enough has the feel of parts of the Heimat series.
The main non-Stasi characters are a middle-aged and successful playwright, Georg Dreyman, and his live-in mistress, a successful and voluptuous actress Christa-Maria (played by the successful and voluptuous actress, Martina Gedeck). And like Heimat, it is easy to watch.
The basic plot is that the Minister suspects the playwright Dreyman of being a subversive. He puts Lt. Col. Grubitz on the job of proving it, and Grubitz gives the task to his old class-mate, Captain Wiesler, a dedicated, even fanatical, Stasi interrogator and case officer.
Wiesler spends many hours above the playwright’s flat wearing earphones and listening to what is happening below. And he also finds out that Christa-Maria is involved with the minister. Dreyman and his friends begin to draft an article to be published in Der Spiegel which would reveal the true number of suicides in the GDR.
The best character portrait of is that of the Minister, played by Thomas Thieme as bloated, bullying, brutal, and on the Central Committee, but shrewd, and with a caustic wit.Grubitz is shown as self-seeking, occasionally dressed in what appears to be SS uniform, and as having more than a passing resemblance to John Bird.
The Stasi’s task is shown as being to decide who shall be permitted to write plays, who to direct them, and who to act in them. Their methods are menace, interrogation, imprisonment, and the destruction of careers and of families. And they benefit from a vast number of informers, some self-motivated, some intimidated, others merely encouraged.
We see much of the playwright, but he says surprisingly little. He himself has made compromises, and but he is surrounded by a black-listed stage director, and by various literary men of integrity. They do not say a great deal either.
The principal weakness in the film, apart from its being short on political and historical background, is that, Oscar notwithstanding, the key events, which I cannot reveal, are unbelievable.
Certificate: 15
Running time: 137 minutes