Lives of Others - The (Das Leben der Anderen)

Synopsis: In 1984 East Berlin, a dedicated Stasi secret police surveillance expert finds his loyalties shifting as he is immersed in the lives of others, an actress and a playwright. [Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, 2007, Germany, Rating MA, Running time 132 minutes]

A story of one man living through the lives of others, Das Leben der Anderen is an intimate account of the fear and surveillance that controlled the German Democratic Republic prior to unification in 1989. Surveillance was the means by which the Republic was documented in meticulous detail, reducing the humanity of its population to dry notations.

9.30pm: Captain Weisler attends new play by playwright Georg Dreyman. Capt Weisler is accompanied by superior officer, Oberstleutnant Anton Grubitz.

9.35pm: The Minister for Culture instructs Grubitz and Weisler to place Dreyman under surveillance.

9.45pm: Dreyman’s lover, the actress Christa-Maria is driven home. Her clothes are in disarray as she steps out of the Minister’s car. Prob. non-consensual sexual intercourse.

Weisler (Ulrich Mühe) , the surveillance expert, is a well-used tool of the State. He is small, contained, drab, loyal, inconspicuous, yet intimidatingly relentless in the interrogation cells of the Stasi secret police. But his initial, unreflective desire to monitor the possibly subversive playwright turns into something else. At the end of the long cable of his surveillance headphones, he finds himself a ghostly presence in the home of Dreyman (Sebastian Koch) and Christa-Maria (Martina Gedeck) . Falling in love with their lives, his loyalties to the State begin to crumble.

As Christa-Maria is drawn deeper into the unwanted affections of the odious Minister, and Dreyman is forced to question the artistic censorship of the State, subversion begins to brew in the Dreyman apartment. As Dreyman takes elaborate steps to secretly publish an expose of the regime without having it being traced back to him, Captain Weisler must face the question whether to report him – and if not, how to conceal the truth from the superiors that are beginning to distrust him. The story’s tension continues to ratchet up, only resolving well after the fall of the Berlin wall when all their lives have irrevocably changed.

The film’s Orwellian themes are so well visually and emotionally realised that the somewhat bare characterization can be overlooked. As the frighteningly farcical operations of the Republic’s secret police unfold, a silent question lingers: to what extent have the same evils of fear and secrecy invaded our modern-day ‘democratic republics’. As Dreyman wonders, how is it that such men as these lead our countries?

4 flims.