The Lives of Others
Directed by Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck
We don’t get many German imports, but The Lives of Others arrives as a particular surprise since it mostly avoids the clichés that cling to movies about Germany. This debut feature by Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck dramatizes the repressive living conditions of East Germany just before the 1989 fall of the Berlin Wall. Georg Dreymark (Sebastian Koch), a playwright, and his actress-wife Christa-Maria (Martina Gedeck) become the subject of secret government surveillance conducted by Gerd Wiesler (Ulrich Mühe), an officer of Stasi, the State Security Department. Because it’s easy to look back and judge how people should behave, the early scenes seem to conventionally score points on behalf of the struggling artists and against the officious martinet. But as the film proceeds, von Donnersmarck complicates the emotional involvement of all the characters. His complexity trumps the usual facile concern with partisanship.
Set during the time that Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s movies had saturated world cinema consciousness, The Lives of Others’ style is cool modern noir. It makes East German alienation seem almost a cinematic convention. Shifting between Georg’s literary pride turning into political anguish, his wife’s on- and off-stage performances and Wiesler’s pent-up hidden activities, the film resembles a deftly-contrived yet deadly serious farce. (It immediately shames Steven Soderbergh’s abominable The Good German.) This construct represents a working-through of Germany’s political legacy by von Donnersmarck who may, understandably, view the recent past as a cosmic farce. But he comes up with something unexpectedly timely—mixing moral suspense and moral sentiment as proof of personal and social concern.
Von Donnersmarck uses tension to access compassion for those on both sides of inhibiting political conditions. When a cafeteria joke about Erich Honecker, the East German head of state, passes among government employees, the filmmaker’s insight into Teutonic personality neatly contrasts the bullying against fear. Wiesler and the Dreymarks all suffer a social tragedy that includes home invasion, torture and extortion, yet despite the collapse of what we call civil liberties, the film’s best moments show their commiseration with each other. This turn-about is centered on a miracle: when Wiesler, listening-in on the Dreymarks, hears Beethoven’s Sonata for a Good Man. Enticed by cultural legacy to connect with his humanity, Wiesler then opens himself to poetry (Brecht, in fact), and to the humanity that art traditionally represents. Its effect changes him morally, politically.
It measures von Donnersmarck’s empathy that the emotional crisis of his East German factotum is more moving than the melodramatically-victimized liberal couple. Wiesler’s a memorable portrait of repression: his shoulders pinched, arms slack, torso rigid, but his eyes are sensitive. Against the dreadful atmosphere of his government assignment (titled Operation Lazlo), Wiesler personifies the little individual who seems squashed but gains hope and rebels. He comes quietly to life which gives real heart to the movie.
How surprising that a new German film would teach Americans about human faith at a time when acclaimed movies like Borat lack faith. And how fitting since (in addition to Fassbinder) this movie owes a real debt to Francis Coppola’s The Conversation for its depiction of an isolated individual in a period of paranoia. The Lives of Others also dovetails with Robert De Niro’s disgracefully overlooked The Good Shepherd. Both movies explore the soul of a country through individuals caught in difficult situations but—most importantly—seen without judgment.
