TAKE A MOMENT TO CONSİDER THE "LIVES OF OTHERS"

I occasionally check out the “IMDB Top 250”. I mean, not that often every once in a while, it changes with votes that’s true but not THAT often… Anyway, I saw this little gem as number 56 in said list and my hear t literally jumped for joy. I remember being on an absolute emotional rollercoaster as I watched this film. It’s a funny little European number with quite a political sub text but I really don’t care. The human story in it is just so touching and the overall message so powerful I simply couldn’t let it slip by. The Oscar® committee certainly didn’t it won the Oscar® for Best Foreign Language film in 2006 among other prestigious accolades. Oh yes, for those of you (Mom, I’m talking to you too you know) who think watching films in any language except English is just “too odd” you will have to get over that one. Apart from the fact that you are missing out on what is in my mind at least 50% of all films that are worth watching, this particular film is in German. So there.
The Lives Of Others is the story of life in Easter Germany. It is the year 1984 and Gerd Weisler is a Captain in the Stasi – the East German police. He is loyal to the system and very dedicated to his job, to the point that his job is his entire life and world. Everything he does is tainted by his job and that’s why when he is detailed to set up a full-scale surveillance of a prominent East German playwright Gregor Dreyman he thinks of it as nothing but duty. He sets up “shop” in the playwright’s attic and is soon in possession of the intimate details of both his life and the life of his long-term partner Christa-Maria. However the more Weisler listens, the more confused he becomes. The playwright and his partner aren’t the “dissident artists” he thought they would be. Christa-Maria seems to be trying to fight off the unwanted attention of the Minister of Culture himself. And the minister seems to be intent on destroying Dreyman at all costs… Added to that, the lonely Weisler has grown fond of the couple. With his new “friends” under increasing pressure from the government and faced with the fact that he is actually no more than a pawn in a political game centered round the ministers libido Weisler is faced with a tough decision. Close his eyes and be the dutiful public servant he has always been or destroy a shining career built up over a lifetime by doing what he has a terrible feeling may actually be “the right thing”…
Now, you may see this as blatant anti-communist propaganda, and sure there is some of that thrown in. However, you will not find it hard to see past it once you sit down to watch this one. You are drawn into Weisler’s personal drama pretty quickly, you watch him transform from a caricature of a political officer to an actual human being. The braking down of habits and ideas that have surrounded him his whole lifetime, his loneliness and his discovery that he has in fact possibly been on the wrong side all along… It is also a brilliant allegory of shyness. Watching and observing “the lives of others” down to the minutest detail without being able to participate in them. Actually wanting to participate but being faced with insurmountable barriers. And change. Changing oneself and the pain that sometimes brings…
On another level, the film was actually general culture for me as well, I knew very little about East Germany and the Stasi and the film gave me ample chances to “brush up”. This is a film though, principally I feel, about the fact that there is something human that unifies all of us, even if we seem to be on completely opposite sides. And even though it may be, in some cases, painful and surprising to realize this.