The Lives of Others
In honor of my brief visit to Berlin at the end of last week, I watched a German movie called "The Lives of Others." It is about two men, one a famous play-writer who has always written plays approved by the Ministry of Culture in the German Democratic Republic (East Germany), the other the Stasi (secret police) informer assigned to watch him.
At the beginning we see this Stasi man interrogating a man for 48 hours and finally getting a confession out of him, and then teaching a class of future secret police how to interrogate a person and how to know if they are guilty or innocent. (Tip, they said an innocent person will get angrier the longer they are incarcerated. Good to know, may need that one someday.) He appears to be a very hard and evil man. He has no life outside of his job. Just an empty apartment and the occasional prostitute.
The play-writer has a very full life: lots of friends and a girl-friend (I can never quite figure out if she lives with him or just stays there a lot). But she also has a secret, which will eventually destroy her. One day the playwright's favorite director kills himself after a 7-year forced hiatus from working. This prompts the play-writer to write something that will change all three of their lives.
This movie is not about good and evil. It is more about the good and evil in all of us. We certainly see the evil of that government and how they tried to control people's lives. But there is also a view of those who tried to stop it.
I highly encourage you to watch it.
At the beginning we see this Stasi man interrogating a man for 48 hours and finally getting a confession out of him, and then teaching a class of future secret police how to interrogate a person and how to know if they are guilty or innocent. (Tip, they said an innocent person will get angrier the longer they are incarcerated. Good to know, may need that one someday.) He appears to be a very hard and evil man. He has no life outside of his job. Just an empty apartment and the occasional prostitute.
The play-writer has a very full life: lots of friends and a girl-friend (I can never quite figure out if she lives with him or just stays there a lot). But she also has a secret, which will eventually destroy her. One day the playwright's favorite director kills himself after a 7-year forced hiatus from working. This prompts the play-writer to write something that will change all three of their lives.
This movie is not about good and evil. It is more about the good and evil in all of us. We certainly see the evil of that government and how they tried to control people's lives. But there is also a view of those who tried to stop it.
I highly encourage you to watch it.