Blog From The Bench

The Lives of Others
Director: Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck

East Berlin, 1984. The wall is still intact. Party-loyal Captain Gerd Wiesler (Ulrich Mühe) is a master interrogator and surveillance specialist for the Stasi, the GDR secret police. He gets up, goes to work, comes home, and lives within the boundaries of the Socialist machine, fiercely loyal to his party and to his government. He teaches a new generation of students the fine arts of interrogation, of the fine methodical breakdown of will and spirit that comes with being flagged an enemy of the state.

His newest assignment is to monitor the activities of the party’s leading play writer, Georg Dreyman (Sebastian Koch), a party loyalist, but inherently untrustworthy, being a writer. His team breaks into Dreyman’s apartment and bug every square inch. Wiesler begins monitoring the comings and goings of Dreyman and his actress girlfriend, Christa-Maria (Martina Gedeck) hoping to find incriminating evidence of anti-state behavior that can be used against the pair. Soon, Wiesler finds himself drawn to the vibrancy and creativity of the couple, privy to all the intimate details of their lives, and in doing so, begins to emulate some of their more controversial aspects unknowingly.

Beautiful and tragic, The Lives Of Others is an examination into loneliness, love, and the act of observing, and thereby connecting with that which you observe. East Germany is portrayed as a paranoid, dull and muted country, but one entirely inhabitable if you walk within the boundaries of a paranoid government. Step outside of these boundaries and the Stasi show up at your house to take you away for interrogation. The cinematography is flat, grey, yet hauntingly sparse and beautiful.

Mühe gives a fantastic performance as Wiesler, a fiercely loyal man who finds his convictions floating away in the breeze like cherry blossoms – he is so enraptured by the beauty of his subjects and the intimate moments of their lives that he utterly loses the ability to distinguish the boundaries in his own life. His newfound appreciation into life, literature and music given to him by observing the artists at work only serves to shine a spotlight onto the emptiness and hollowness of his own existence. Soon, he is irrecoverably changed by loneliness and his burning desire to connect with others, stepping beyond the boundaries of observer into a participant into the lives of others.

First time director Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck gives a surprisingly mature and well-realized vision in his film, one that earned him a furious standing ovation at the North American premiere this year at the Toronto International Film Festival. Henckel-Donnersmarck (on-hand with Mühe) explained to the audience that the first non-German individual to see his film was the president of Sony Pictures Classics, whom after seeing it, immediately offered to buy it outright.

And with good reason; you’ll be hearing from this film soon. Already critically acclaimed in Germany, The Lives Of Others is too profound, too hauntingly beautiful and poignant to go unnoticed by the rest of the world for long.

What a marvelous film to kick off a film festival spree with.

Verdict: 90