The Lives of Others (2006)
“And the Oscar goes to, The Lives of Others" Was I the only one who stared at the screen with my mouth gaping open at the ‘apparently expected’ celebrations of the German filmmakers? First of all, they never should have won. Second of all, why weren’t they surprised? Had they not seen the other films in the category? Ugh.
After at least a week of complaining to anyone who would listen, I decided to give The Lives of Others a shot. Did I not mention that I hadn’t seen it? Oh, well I hadn’t…but I had seen both Water and Pan’s Labyrinth, and would have been happy with a win by either one of them. I figured that nothing could be better than those films, so I retired my foreign film watching cloak. After the upset at the Oscars, I thought that I may have retired a bit early, so I pulled a Michael Jordan and came out of retirement. Away I go, back down to the Uptown.
The film begins with a bit of “history” about Germany in the mid 80’s, written in the classic “historical significance” style of a black background with white writing. I would like to meet one person who can read paragraphs about the history of East and West Germany in 3 seconds flat. They went so fast that you weren’t reading, but rather skimming for the good parts. You could hear grumblings all around the theatre, which continued on as each person tried to find a German person to ask about the historical context of the film. Since there were no Germans sitting in our section, we had to guess. We were in the dark.
The story follows the lives of artists living in East Berlin, before the destruction of the Berlin wall. Georg Dreyman (Sebastian Koch), a popular playwright, and his girlfriend, actress Christa-Maria Sieland (Martina Gedeck), are being observed by Stasi Captain Gerd Wiesler (Ulrich Muhe) under anti-socialist suspicions. The film shows the relationships between artists of the time, and also the artist’s acting patrons. While the desperation felt at the time is transferred beautifully onto the screen, one is left with wondering, “Why?” a lot. Despite the constant feeling of angst, one also feels the nagging of confusion at the actions of certain characters. Watching the Berlin secret police monitor anything is stressful, but this film’s depiction was even more so than usual. At the end, one will ask again, “Why?” The answer I felt the film was begging me to reply was: “The Lives of Others.”
The script was ok. The acting was pretty ok. The filming was average. The ending was rather good. To make a long story short: Water and Pan’s Labyrinth were better. I give it 3 half hearted Sterne out of 5. I also clapped when someone died.