Das Leben der Anderen (The Lives of Others) by Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck (2006)
11 February 2007Germany’s entry to this years academy awards is a disturbing but enjoyable film, I can easily tell why this film is getting so much acclaim. I highly recomend checking this film out if you get a chance. I had wanted to see it since I saw the trailer, but for some reason my brain didn’t connect with the name, but I did finally go see it, as I have been missing seeing a film of late.
This film is set in East Germany in 1984, 5 years before the fall of the Berlin wall, and follows an east German Stasi officer (Secret Police) Captain Gerd Wiesler (Ulrich Mühe) who works for his old friend Lietenant Colonel Anton Grubitz (Ulrich Tukur). Wiesler is a master interrogator and works teaching new students interrogation techniques. Grubitz takes his friend to see a play by a writer who is considered to be the most politically correct, this is Georg Dreyman (Sebastian Koch) and starring in the play is his girlfriend Christa-Maria Sieland (Martian Gedeck). Wiesler is immediately suspicious, as it turns out is Minister Bruno Hempf (Thomas Thieme) who orders Grubitz to begin spying on Dreyman before a party he is having this weekend.
REVIEW CONTAIN SPOILERS….
Wiesler and a sergeant switch on and off on their spying, going day and night. And quickly they see that the minister is in fact giving Sieland rides, and they are instructed by Grubitz to remove him from reports, because it is obviously him trying to get rid of a rival. Wiesler keeps spying, and eventually gets the sergeant taken off, but not for the reasons told, but to protect the man he is spying on.
Dreyman’s best friend is a black listed director named Albert Jerska (Wolkmar Kleinert) and he hangs himself after being blacklisted for seven years, and Dreyman has a change of heart and decides to write an article on the suicides in East Germany for publishing in West Germany. It talks about how they have statistics for everything, and yet they stopped having statistics for suicides in 1977 when they were second for most suicides in Europe. Dreyman tries to keep it from Christa-Maria, who he can’t live without, and yet he knows of her affair with the minister, and eventually confronts her. He found out with the help of Wiesler, though Dreyman never knew, and Christa-Maria stops seeing the minister because of a conversation with Wiesler she has in a bar. Dreyman with help from his friend Paul Hauser (Hans-Uwe Bauer) writes the typewriter on a typewriter that was snuck in so the Stasi won’t know who wrote it, and he gets the article to East Germany. Hauser and Dreyman believe the apartment is not bugged because they pretend Hauser is being snuck to West Germany, when in fact he is not, and Wiesler does not report it.
Then the minister decides to ruin Christa-Maria because she is not seeing him, so he has her arrested for her illegal drug use. She gives up Dreyman, and Grubitz and his men go to search his house, but don’t find the typewriter, and Grubitz calls in Wiesler to ask why he didn’t catch this, and gives him one last chance to interogate Christa-Maria. He does and gets her to tell where the typewriter is, and makes he a mole, but Wiesler sneaks over and takes the typewriter, and when Grubitz arrives they find nothing, but Christa-Maria doesn’t know and she runs to the street and gets hit by a truck killing herself.
Dreyman is let off, but Grubtiz knows Wiesler let him off, so he has him transfered to a job steaming open letters for the next 20 years, where he is 4 years later when the wall falls.
2 years after that Dreyman is at one of his plays being performed, and he leaves when he sees the part that Christa-Maria plays and he runs into teh minister who tells him he was being spied on. Dreyman goes and reads the reports and finds that Wiesler saved his ass, and changed reports, and he finds out who he is, and sees him, but does not confront him.
A year later Wiesler is out delivering flyers and he passes a bookstore and sees a new novel by Dreyman, so he goes and looks, and it is dedicated to his code name that he signed his spying, so he buys it, and doesn’t have it wrapped, because it is for him.
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Wow, what a powerful film. This poor lonely man, who has no human contact in his life, except a hooker once, realizes how much he likes this couple he is spying on, and ends up helping them all he can, even ruining his own career to do it. Wow, what an amazing directorial debut. I highly recommend this film!!!
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