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Product Description
This critically-acclaimed, Oscar®-winning film (Best Foreign Language Film, 2006) is the erotic, emotionally-charged experience Lisa Schwarzbaum (Entertainment Weekly) calls "a nail-biter of a thriller!" Before the collapse of the Berlin Wall, East Germany?s population was closely monitored by the State Secret Police (Stasi). Only a few citizens above suspicion, like renowned pro-Socialist playwright Georg Dreyman, were permitted to lead private lives. But when a corrupt government official falls for Georg?s stunning actress-girlfriend, Christa, an ambitious Stasi policeman is ordered to bug the writer?s apartment to gain incriminating evidence against the rival. Now, what the officer discovers is about to dramatically change their lives - as well as his - in this seductive political thriller Peter Travers (Rolling Stone) proclaims is "the best kind of movie: one you can?t get out of your head."
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Nominated for a Best Foreign Language Film Oscar, this is a first-rate thriller that, like Bertolucci's The Conformist and Coppola's The Conversation, opts for character development over car chases. The place is East Berlin, the year is 1984, and it all begins with a simple surveillance assignment: Capt. Gerd Wiesler (Ulrich Mühe in a restrained, yet deeply felt performance), a Stasi officer and a specialist in this kind of thing, has been assigned to keep an eye on Georg Dreyman (Sebastian Koch, Black Book), a respected playwright, and his actress girlfriend, Christa-Maria Sieland (Martina Gedeck, Mostly Martha). Though Dreyman is known to associate with the occasional dissident, like blacklisted director Albert Jerska (Volkmar Kleinert), his record is spotless. Everything changes when Wiesler discovers that Minister Hempf (Thomas Thieme) has an ulterior motive in spying on this seemingly upright citizen. In other words, it's personal, and Wiesler's sympathies shift from the government to its people--or at least to this one particular person. That would be risky enough, but then Wiesler uses his privileged position to affect a change in Dreyman's life. The God-like move he makes may be minor and untraceable, but it will have major consequences for all concerned, including Wiesler himself. Writer/director Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck starts with a simple premise that becomes more complicated and emotionally involving as his assured debut unfolds. Though three epilogues is, arguably, two too many, The Lives of Others is always elegant, never confusing. It's class with feeling. --Kathleen C. Fennessy Beyond The Lives of Others 
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Stills from The Lives of Others (click for larger image)
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Summary: "won't get fooled again"
I watched this movie only by chance after first reading many eulogies it received among reviewers. As the theme developed and I began to enjoy the immediacy of the plot I slowly realized this wasn't quite the sensitive searching look back upon a failed social experiment I'd been led to believe. As you would expect modern performers are convincing actors - I think the sharpness and no frills approach of modern TV drama has over the years lifted the profession anyway. Can anyone imagine how long an temperamental Joan Crawford type of artist would last in today's climate! The plot whilst rather transparent was adequate. As it developed and later seemed to hinge upon the DDR suicide issue I could see the female lead was probably doomed - but then I remembered another real life suicide 'urban myth' from my younger days. In those days Sweden was (somewhat irritating for certain quarters) successful in its social policies. Its 'progressive' politicians with their caring 'populist' internal behavior and humane foreign approach won a great deal of admiration - after a while assertions started circulating in the media. "Ah yes but"...suddenly it seemed they had the highest suicide ratings in the world - seemingly there was insufficient excitement in Swedish lives. Boredom caused them to dive under buses, jump into rivers and hang themselves under bridges. Hmmm!
I expected an intelligent and genuine examination of a top/down flawed new approach to Societies problems - a fllmic reversal of the many failed classic attempts over millennia to overthrow the stifling elites by revolt from below. I'm afraid this movie is being hailed by the same people who convinced me that Obama saw things in a different light....his was a new approach....the tone is certainly different but nothing has altered. 'The lives of others' is yet another example - you've seen it before, nothing is changed it is just another predictably praised - I noticed for instance Wm Buckley and one of the Podhoritz clan - two of the foundling godfathers of the NeoCon mafia lauding it as 'The greatest movie I've ever seen' in one case and 'One of the greatest movies ever made in the other'. We've been conned again I'm sorry to say it's just another 'Commie Bashing' production.
The movie was seen eventually on a business trip with a well known Airline - I am flying again a few weeks time and am look forward to a viewing of Michael Moores latest item 'Capitalism - a love story'. Ahem....I'm sure it will be freely available.
Customer Review:
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Summary: A director's director
Dear Mr. von Donnersmarck,
I have just finished watching "The Lives of Others" while listening to your director's commentary. I must thank you not only for the beautiful, rich experience that your film imparts but also for the generosity with which you share your own feelings and thoughts. The first time I watched the film, I was taken by the thriller aspects -- the depth of futility with which the East German people had to live was (as you show) literally life-threatening in its oppressive persistence. When the mere act of imagining becomes labeled "subversive" by the government, what life can a person truly have?
But what I wanted to write here was to you, Mr. von Donnersmarck, to thank you for your kindness. You are such a generous, intelligent and kind soul. Your film moved me, but your commentary had me in tears. The sheer magnitude of the things you dealt with in the construction of this artwork is mind-boggling and your ability to attend to such detail is nothing short of genius. The warmth that you share with your audience in how you adore the actors and crew, your willingness to be open and honest, your sense of humor, the warmth and the love you feel and communicate -- all these things give me such deep respect for you, and let me know that you have earned, in advance, every accolade you receive, now and in the future.
What a breadth of knowledge you have! To go from recommending Brecht as a good reason to learn German to putting a "Visitors Welcome" sign on Stasi headquarters! To speak of the Leitmotif and how you used it in the music, but also show us the Pieta. You show us a lonely man, yet you filled the world around him with love. You talk of persistence, yet you admit your mistakes (when you talk about the color palette and say that there is no red, as if on queue, the councilman's brakelights go on. I thought you'd laugh at that...).
You are a man like whom I would most earnestly want to be. I envy those who have the honor of calling you friend.
Chris
Customer Review:
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Summary: Fantastic, touching film on humanity and meaning
A police spy is assigned to monitor a renowned author and playwright suspected of spreading heretical pamphlets objecting to the limitations on rights and freedoms in partitioned Eastern Germany. In the process of monitoring the author's conversations and visits, the spy is increasingly troubled by the integrity, nobility, and humanity of the person he is assigned to convict.
The Lives of Others illustrates the pull of a guileless, hopeful idealism on a simple civil servant and gives us a touching and bittersweet definition of what it means to be human. In the midst of intense injustice, misery and grief of partitioned Eastern Germany, it is a story of humanity, trust, and gratitude.
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Summary: Rats in the walls
'The Lives of Others' is an interesting recent German film set in the old Communist DDR, depicting a relationship between watcher and watched.
The watched is Georg Dreyman, a playwright known for his ideological plays, and the only living East German playwright who is read in the West (the film being set in 1984). His plays express the possibility that people are capable of change - much to the contempt of the Minister for Culture, who doesn't believe they are. The corrupt Minister, who has designs on Dreyman's actress girlfriend, orders the Stasi (state security) to investigate him.
Enter the watcher: Stasi officer Gerd Wiesler. Wiesler leads a lonely, fairly meaningless existence, mirroring the feeling of East Berlin itself (as portrayed in the film). But Wiesler also has an idealist streak, in contrast to his more Machiavellian colleagues. This idealism doens't quite mesh with the corrupt system - and perhaps he has sensed this subconsciously for some time. The things he overhears when listening in on Dreyman finally convince him that the system is not what it claims to be, nor what he originally thought it was.
'The Lives of Others' is certainly worth watching for the evocative historical atmosphere it creates. Worth noting, too, is the ending, set two years after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Dreyman attends a new version of one of his old plays in Berlin, and comes face to face with his old enemy the Culture Minister. The latter expresses his contempt for the new Germany, saying it gives people "nothing to believe in, nothing to rebel against". There is a phenomenon in Germany called 'Ostalgie' (nostaglia for the old East), and this may be the most eloquent critique of the new Germany - that an old Commie finds it so insipid as to be "not even worth rebelling against!"
But one thing the film DOESN'T show is how many ex-Stasi rats are still loose in the corridors of Berlin. The German Financial Time claims that around 17,000 ex-Stasi members are now civil servants. And that means the ex-Minister is wrong - the current German regime IS worth rebelling against.
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Summary: The Triumph of the Banal
"The Lives of Others" follows the quietly exploits of an unlikely hero.
Georg Dreyman is a brilliant writer, and intelligent enough to think for himself in a regime that prizes the appearance of such qualities, but moves to suppress it nonetheless. But Dreyman is not the hero of this tale.
Hauptman Gerd Weisler is both an enforcer for the GDR's notorious secret police - "The Stasi" - and a dedicated believer in the state. Luckily for Dreyman, Weisler proves to be one of the few true believers left alive in the GDR. A genius in the art of interrogation, Weisler is fixed for a career above those relegated (virtually imprisoned) in a cellar steam-opening envelopes. When Weisler receives orders to surveille the author, he finds little of concern - the brilliant Dreyman proves no threat to the sanctity of the regime. Instead, Weisler learns that his superiors' interests in the playright stem from less-than purely socialist motives. Walking a tightrope, Weisler his own venal bosses to protect the playright without revealing his role.
"Others" is such a brilliant and understated film for several reasons. Weisler becomes a hero, while preserving his outward appearance as an arm of the dreaded Stasi. Even late in the film, in a scene where he interrogates Dreyman's actress lover, you never lose sense of the unimaginable pressure and terror he exerts on his "victims". Most stories reserve the glory for the beautiful, the epic and the undeniably valorous - but "Others" reveals the heroic role that even the ugly, the hated and the craven must thanklessly play in the battle for freedom.
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