The Lives of Others (Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck)

I haven't had a chance to see many films in the theatre since I've come up to San Francisco; the first two I caught were both very good in their own ways, but this time I feel compelled to share my thoughts. The Lives of Others may sound familiar: it won the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film in a bit of an upset against the very popular Pan's Labyrinth. Most people were shocked the night of the ceremony; Pan's had already scored several technical awards, including one it wasn't expected to--how could it have lost the big one? The quickest explanation wasn't hard to uncover: Academy members are allowed to cast a vote in any category unchecked, save for Foreign Language. You must prove you've seen all 5 films in order to vote in this category. Why this isn't done for all of them I'm not sure, but that's the way it is. Most of the voters that manage to see all 5 are on the older side, and tend to go with the more "normal" fare--your typical sentimental Oscar bait material. Pan's Labyrinth was a huge hit with the academy body at large, but perhaps was too much of a fantastic fable for the older demographic.

What I didn't know until this afternoon was that The Lives of Others, in addition to being closer to a typical winning entry, also happens to be a deeper and more powerful piece of work than its competitor, which was also among the best I saw last year. It's a look back into the not-too-distant past in the years right before the Berlin Wall came down and East Germany joined its democratic Western half. The secret police of the Socialist/Communist government spied ruthlessly on its citizens, suspecting anything a person might say, do, or even imply, and scrutinizing those who appeared to be doing anything less than toeing the party line. To put trust in anyone, even your closest associates or lovers, was a gamble. Phones were tapped, apartments bugged--in short, it wasn't a place for loose lips.




The story is centered on Wiesler, a stoic loyalist in the Stasi, or secret police, who is assigned to eavesdrop and monitor the goings-on of Dreyman, a well-known playwright, and his leading actress/ live-in girlfriend. Though the writer has friends in high places and appears to be sympathetic to the party, any artist is vulnerable to dissident elements, and a party member has designs on his woman. Therefore, he gets the surveillance treatment. Over the course of the investigation, Wiesler's seemingly-impenetrable armor cracks as he gets to know and eventually sympathize with the couple, who struggle to maintain their personal dignity and artistic integrity as the oppressive climate encroaches despite their best efforts to straddle the line between compliance and expression.




How this plays out is anything but conventional, and it manages to be both thrilling and genuniely moving, perfectly illuminating what was behind the curtain (no pun intended) of pre-Glasnost East Germany, but also how men and women of conscience anywhere handle themselves when they finally contend with truths they have been reluctant to acknowledge. Films rarely conclude in a truly satisfying way for me, as it's so difficult and arbitrary as to where one ends a work of art, so I'm happy to say this one's final moments were very powerful and I left the theatre in that fog that settles around your head when you've been exposed to something remarkable on the screen.

This one's well-worth the effort to seek it out, and should still be playing in most of the major cities.