The Lives of Others

Commendable for its historic scope and depth of human feeling, if not for its ideological onesidedness and thriller mechanics masquerading as naturalism, Florian Henckel Von Donnersmarck’s The Lives of Others is an emotionally resonant look at the tragic consequences of the Orwellian police state for a pair of dramatic artists during the final years of East German communism, and how those consequences transform one of the men responsible. A stern, rule-abiding member of the Stasi--the East German secret police--Hauptmann Gerd Wiesler (Ulrich Muhe) teaches new recruits the tactics of sensory deprivation and cruelty necessary to break detainees and discover their secrets. Assigned to monitor the activities of Georg Dreyman (Sebastian Koch), a popular playwright well regarded by high-ranking party officials but nonetheless suspicious enough to draw red flags, Wiesler bugs his apartment, threatens a suspicious neighbor about warning Dreyman, and camps out in an empty space above Dreyman’s apartment, listening to his every private moment day after day, scouring for indications that his allegiance to the party is waning. Of course, what he discovers isn’t nearly what he expects.

Georg is a reluctantly faithful party member, despite accusations of conformity and collusion by his fiery leftist friend Paul Hauser (Hans-Uwe Bauer) and the blacklisting and emotional dissolution of his colleague, Albert Jerska (Volkmar Kleinert), under whose direction Georg’s theatrical work has risen to prominence. Georg’s lover is an actress, Christa-Maria Sieland (Martina Gedeck). She stars in his plays and has a passion for both Georg and the theatre that is matched by her disregard for politics, which is at odds with both the left-leaning theatre types Georg associates with and Minister of Culture Bruno Tempf (Thomas Thieme), a pudgy, corrupt, insidious man with little capacity or desire to appreciate the artists and artwork he’s charged with administering and unabated sexual desire for Christa.

As Gerd listens in on and discovers minor indiscretions with which he could charge Georg, he’s hesitant and increasingly won over by the intoxicating world of ideas, poetry, love, and music that the dashingly handsome playwright inhabits. Soon he discovers that Dreyman has written an essay on rising suicide rates among East Germans, especially persecuted artists living behind the curtain, which has been published by a popular West German journal. As the imperative to find something on the increasingly harassed Dreyman intensifies and Tempf’s sexual blackmail of Christa threatens to erode her relationship with Georg, Wiesler begins to cover Dreyman’s tracks before his superiors suspect, with tragic results for all parties.

Von Donnersmarck has made a debut film with a lot to admire. The casting shines brighly--the trio of performers at the center of the drama are marvelous, especially Muhe, in whose conflicted space we sit and listen as the joys of an intellectual life expose themselves to him. An entire range of emotions plays on his reticent face as he grows hungry for the liberation Georg seems to represent, while he silently realizes his ideological imperatives, his entire identity, are collapsing under the weight of injustice. In their largely two-note roles, Thieme and Ulrich Tukur as his underling and Wiesler as his direct superior are arresting. Sadly, they aren’t asked to play fully realized individuals, which might have undermined the film’s system of identification, but probably would have strengthened its human tragedy.

                                                            Brandon Harris