Post by pjotr on Jan 19, 2011 14:54:42 GMT 1
The Lives of Others
The Lives of Others (German: Das Leben der Anderen) is a 2006 German drama film, marking the feature film debut of filmmaker Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck. The film involves the monitoring of the cultural scene of East Berlin by agents of the Stasi, the GDR's secret police. It stars Ulrich Mühe as Stasi Captain Gerd Wiesler, Ulrich Tukur as his chief Anton Grubitz, Sebastian Koch as the playwright Georg Dreyman, and Martina Gedeck as Dreyman's lover, a prominent actress named Christa-Maria Sieland.
Stasi Captain Gerd Wiesler
Chief Anton Grubitz at the interrigation of Christa-Maria Sieland, Dreyman's lover
Playwright Georg Dreyman's lover, the East-German actress Christa-Maria Sieland
East-German Playwright Georg Dreyman and his lover, actress Christa-Maria Sieland
The film was released in Germany on 23 March 2006. At the same time, the screenplay was published by Suhrkamp Verlag. The Lives of Others won the 2007 Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. The film had earlier won seven Deutscher Filmpreis awards – including best film, best director, best screenplay, best actor, and best supporting actor – after having set a new record with 11 nominations. It was nominated for Best Foreign Language Film at the 64th Golden Globe Awards.
Plot
The movie takes place in the German Democratic Republic (DDR) in 1984, which is under Stasi control. The movie's main character is Hauptmann Gerd Wiesler (Ulrich Mühe).
Wiesler's superior, Grubitz (Ulrich Tukur), assigns him to spy on playwright Georg Dreyman (Sebastian Koch). After bugging Dreyman's flat, Wiesler and another agent listen on their equipment and summarise what they hear in their reports.
Wiesler soon learns the real reason behind the Dreyman surveillance. The Party's Minister of Culture, Bruno Hempf (Thomas Thieme) covets Dreyman's live-in girlfriend, actress Christa-Maria Sieland (Martina Gedeck), and is using his influence with the Stasi to bring Dreyman down, thus ridding himself of a rival. Wiesler, a dedicated socialist, is horrified by the abuse of power this represents. Weisler also sees that Dreyman and Sieland are deeply in love. Sieland has been secretly having sexual relations with Hempf. She is revolted by every encounter, but continues to see him, fearing the danger of rejecting the advances of so powerful a man, who could easily destroy her entire acting career, and her life. She also relies on Hempf to turn a blind eye to her use of illegal prescription drugs.
East-German Playwright Georg Dreyman and his lover, actress Christa-Maria Sieland
Wiesler manages to help Dreyman discover Sieland's relationship with Hempf, and Dreyman implores Sieland to end the affair. Sieland at first refuses to take the risk, but she later reconsiders.
Although a Communist, Dreyman is disillusioned with the way his blacklisted colleagues are treated by the State. Shortly after the apartment is bugged, at Dreyman's birthday party, his friend, Albert Jerska, a blacklisted theatre director, gives him the sheet music to a piece titled "Sonata vom Guten Mensch." Shortly afterwards, Jerska hangs himself. Infuriated, Dreyman decides to anonymously publish an article on concealed suicide rates in the West German periodical Der Spiegel. As all typewriters are registered, Dreyman uses a miniature typewriter smuggled in from West Germany, which he hides under the threshold between two rooms of his apartment. Before selecting the flat as a headquarters, Dreyman and his friends test whether the flat is bugged by a feigned attempt at smuggling. However, Wiesler decides against ringing the border control, and the conspirators are left certain the flat is not bugged.
Although Wiesler intended his inactivity to be a one-off, he starts to change through his surveillance - he starts to lie in his reports to protect Dreyman and reduces surveillance hours to eliminate his assistant. Realising the emptiness of his own life, he steals a book by Bertolt Brecht off Dreyman's desk and reads it himself.
Wiesler reading Bertolt Brecht
Eventually, Dreyman and his friends publish the article, enraging the East German State. Through an agent in Der Spiegel's offices, the Stasi obtains the typed manuscript and realizes that it was written on an unregistered typewriter with red ink. At the same time, Hempf is livid at being jilted by Sieland and orders Grubitz to destroy her. After he informs Grubitz of Sieland's illegal drug addiction, the Stasi catch her red-handed at a dentist in the act of buying them. Breaking under pressure, Sieland reveals Dreyman's authorship of the article. The flat is torn apart by a Stasi search team, who fail to find the typewriter, due to its location. Grubitz orders Wiesler to interrogate Sieland and warns him that failure will cost them both, and Sieland tells him where the typewriter is hidden and agrees to become a Stasi informant. Grubitz then orders a second search of Dreyman's apartment, but Wiesler has already left, ostensibly to conceal the evidence. However, Wiesler is determined to protect the couple and, while Dreyman is out, he breaks in and steals the typewriter.
Upon seeing the horrified look on Dreyman's face as he realises she disclosed its location, a guilt-ridden Sieland runs out of the apartment and into the path of a truck. This is witnessed by Wiesler, who had been hiding the typewriter. Dreyman arrives at the scene and Christa-Maria dies in his arms. Certain that she removed the typewriter to protect him, Dreyman weeps inconsollably, as Grubitz offers a polite but perfunctory claim of sympathy. The surveillance of Dreyman's apartment is terminated. Certain that Wiesler has obstructed the investigation, but having no evidence to prove it, Grubitz demotes him to Department M, where he must tediously steam letters open and read them, and gives him a promotion ban until he retires in 20 years.
Four years later, Wiesler is steaming open letters when a co-worker tells him of the fall of the Berlin Wall. After German reunification, Dreyman, who believed his flat was never bugged, learns from Hempf that he was under full surveillance all along. After uncovering the spying equipment in his house, he goes to the old Stasi museum. Reading his Stasi files there, Dreyman further learns that Sieland was released too late to have removed the typewriter, and seeing a red fingerprint on one of the reports from the typewriter's ink, discovers that Stasi Agent "HGW XX/7" had knowingly covered up his deeds against the State, such as the writing of the suicide article. Deeply moved, Dreyman succeeds in locating Wiesler and watches from a distance as the former Captain goes about his new job, delivering leaflets. Although wishing to thank him, Dreyman cannot bring himself to approach Wiesler. Two years later, Dreyman publishes the novel, "Sonata vom Guten Mensch." At a bookstore, Wiesler opens the book and discovers that it is dedicated "To HGW XX/7, with gratitude". As he purchases the book, he is asked if he wants it gift-wrapped. Wiesler responds, "No, it's for me."
Production
Henckel von Donnersmarck's parents were both from East Germany. He has said that, on visits there as a child before the Berlin Wall fell, he could sense the fear they had as subjects of the state.
He said the idea for the film came to him when he was trying to come up with a movie scenario for a film class. He was listening to music and recalled Maxim Gorky's saying that Lenin's favorite piece of music was Beethoven's Appassionata. Gorky recounted a discussion with Lenin:
And screwing up his eyes and chuckling, [Lenin] added without mirth:
"But I can't listen to music often, it affects my nerves, it makes me want to say sweet nothings and pat the heads of people who, living in a filthy hell, can create such beauty. But today we mustn't pat anyone on the head or we'll get our hand bitten off; we've got to hit them on the heads, hit them without mercy, though in the ideal we are against doing any violence to people. Hm-hm - it's a hellishly difficult office!"
Donnersmarck told a New York Times reporter: "I suddenly had this image in my mind of a person sitting in a depressing room with earphones on his head and listening in to what he supposes is the enemy of the state and the enemy of his ideas, and what he is really hearing is beautiful music that touches him. I sat down and in a couple of hours had written the treatment." The screenplay was written during an extended visit to his uncle's monastery, Heiligenkreuz Abbey.
Donnersmarck had difficulty getting financing for the film. Podhoretz speculated that the reason was a reluctance on the part of the film industry to confront the horrors of East German Communism, although he says it is rich with dramatic possibilities. That may also explain why the organizers of the Berlin Film Festival refused to accept it as an official entry for 2006, the critic wrote.
Prior to his death, Sydney Pollack was said to be directing a possible Hollywood remake of the film.
Critical reaction
American journalist John Podhoretz called the film "one of the greatest movies ever made, and certainly the best film of this decade." William F. Buckley, Jr. wrote in his syndicated column that after the film was over, "I turned to my companion and said, 'I think that this is the best movie I ever saw.'" John J. Miller of National Review Online named it #1 in his list of 'The Best Conservative Movies' of the last 25 years.
A review in Daily Variety by Derek Elley noted the "slightly stylized look" of the movie created by "playing up grays and dour greens, even when using actual locations like the Stasi's onetime HQ in Normannenstrasse."
Time magazine's Richard Corliss named the film one of the Top 10 Movies of 2007, ranking it at #2. Corliss praised the film as a "poignant, unsettling thriller."
Film critic Roger Ebert gave the film four stars, describing it as "a powerful but quiet film, constructed of hidden thoughts and secret desires."
Subtle treatment
Several critics pointed to the film's subtle building up of details as one of its prime strengths.
The film is built "on layers of emotional texture", wrote Stephanie Zacharek in Salon online magazine. "von Donnersmarck seizes upon telling details: In one sequence, as Minister Hempf paws at a female conquest, we get a flash of his giant white underpants, a touch that would be funny if it weren't so subliminally horrific."
At another point in the movie, the main character, Wiesler, becomes enchanted by and sympathetic to the couple he is listening in on. "Wiesler's response to those feelings [...] move in on him imperceptibly, with very little telegraphing, making them that much more convincing," Zacharek writes. Podhoretz, reviewing the movie in The Weekly Standard, ascribes the subtleness of Wiesler's response to Mühe, the actor playing him: "That scene [...] is limned with extraordinary stillness and compressed emotion by Ulrich Mühe, an actor heretofore unknown outside Germany who gives a performance so perfect in this, and every other moment in the film, that it's almost beyond words." Josh Rosenblatt, writing in the Austin Chronicle made the same point: "Like all great screen performances, Mühe's magic comes out most in its tiniest moments: a raised eyebrow here, a slight upturn of the lips there. It's a triumph of muted grandeur [...]"
Lisa Schwarzbaum, writing in Entertainment Weekly, pointed out that some of the subtlety in the movie comes from the audience watching as characters are shown not taking action so much as being confronted by the action around them: "Some of the movie's tensest moments take place with the most minimal of action — Wiesler simply listening through headphones, Dreyman simply lying on his bed, a neighbor simply looking through a door peephole, her whole life contingent on what she does about what she sees. In those nerve-racking pauses (handled by a strong, understated cast), Henckel von Donnersmarck conveys everything he wants us to know about choice, fear, doubt, cowardice, and heroism."
An article in First Things makes a philosophical argument in defense of Wiesler's transformation.
Characterisation
A.O. Scott, reviewing the film in The New York Times, wrote that Lives is well-plotted, and added, "The suspense comes not only from the structure and pacing of the scenes, but also, more deeply, from the sense that even in an oppressive society, individuals are burdened with free will. You never know, from one moment to the next, what course any of the characters will choose."
Los Angeles Times movie critic Kenneth Turan agreed that the dramatic tension of the film comes from being "meticulously plotted", and that "it places its key characters in high-stakes predicaments where what they are forced to wager is their talent, their very lives, even their souls." The movie "convincingly demonstrates that when done right, moral and political quandaries can be the most intensely dramatic dilemmas of all."
Zacharek, Scott, Podhoretz and Turan all make the point that although the film gives a powerful, subtle depiction of the corruption at the core of the East German state, it is focused on how people can rise above the moral corruption in which they're sometimes placed. As Podhoretz puts it, the movie is "a character study in the guise of a stunning suspense thriller."
Criticism
Slavoj Žižek, reviewing the film for In These Times, wrote that it softpedals the oppressiveness of the German Democratic Republic (DDR), as when a dissident confronts the minister of culture and doesn't seem to face any consequences for it. Žižek also says the character of the playwright is simply too naive to be believable: "One cannot but recall here a witty formula of life under a hard Communist regime: Of the three features — personal honesty, sincere support of the regime and intelligence — it was possible to combine only two, never all three. [...] The problem with Dreyman is that he does combine all three features."
Although the opening scene of the film is set in Hohenschönhausen prison, the movie could not be filmed there because Hubertus Knabe, the director of the memorial, refused to give Donnersmarck permission. Knabe objected to "making the Stasi man into a hero" and tried to persuade Donnersmarck to change the movie. Donnersmarck cited Schindler's List as an example of such a plot development being possible. Knabe's answer: "But that is exactly the difference. There was a Schindler. There was no Wiesler." The East German dissident songwriter Wolf Biermann was guardedly enthusiastic about the film, writing in a March 2006 article in Die Welt: "The political tone is authentic, I was moved by the plot. But why? Perhaps I was just won over sentimentally, because of the seductive mass of details which look like they were lifted from my own past between the total ban of my work in 1965 and denaturalisation in 1976."
Anna Funder, the author of a book about the Stasi (Stasiland), wrote in a review of the movie for The Guardian that it was not possible for a Stasi operative to have hidden much information from superiors because Stasi employees themselves were watched and operated in teams, seldom if ever working alone. She noted that in his "Director's statement", Donnersmarck wrote, "More than anything else, The Lives of Others is a human drama about the ability of human beings to do the right thing, no matter how far they have gone down the wrong path." Funder replied: "This is an uplifting thought. But what is more likely to save us from going down the wrong path again is recognising how human beings can be trained and forced into faceless systems of oppression, in which conscience is extinguished." Nevertheless, Funder said, the movie is a "superb film" despite not being true to reality.
Clive Davis, writing in his blog at The Spectator's website, said the film did not convincingly show how Wiesler would have decided to change his ways: "What we saw was a promising idea sabotaged by a muddled and undernourished script." "There was simply no serious motivation provided for this transformation. It was almost as if the writer figured he didn't really need to bother."
Controversy
Donnersmarck and Ulrich Mühe were successfully sued for libel for an interview in which Mühe asserted that his former wife informed on him while they were East German citizens through the six years of their marriage. In the film's publicity material, Donnersmarck says that Mühe's former wife denied the claims, although 254 pages' worth of government records detailed her activities.
Three East-German intellectuals from Das Leben der Anderen
The Lives of Others (German: Das Leben der Anderen) is a 2006 German drama film, marking the feature film debut of filmmaker Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck. The film involves the monitoring of the cultural scene of East Berlin by agents of the Stasi, the GDR's secret police. It stars Ulrich Mühe as Stasi Captain Gerd Wiesler, Ulrich Tukur as his chief Anton Grubitz, Sebastian Koch as the playwright Georg Dreyman, and Martina Gedeck as Dreyman's lover, a prominent actress named Christa-Maria Sieland.
Stasi Captain Gerd Wiesler
Chief Anton Grubitz at the interrigation of Christa-Maria Sieland, Dreyman's lover
Playwright Georg Dreyman's lover, the East-German actress Christa-Maria Sieland
East-German Playwright Georg Dreyman and his lover, actress Christa-Maria Sieland
The film was released in Germany on 23 March 2006. At the same time, the screenplay was published by Suhrkamp Verlag. The Lives of Others won the 2007 Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. The film had earlier won seven Deutscher Filmpreis awards – including best film, best director, best screenplay, best actor, and best supporting actor – after having set a new record with 11 nominations. It was nominated for Best Foreign Language Film at the 64th Golden Globe Awards.
Plot
The movie takes place in the German Democratic Republic (DDR) in 1984, which is under Stasi control. The movie's main character is Hauptmann Gerd Wiesler (Ulrich Mühe).
Wiesler's superior, Grubitz (Ulrich Tukur), assigns him to spy on playwright Georg Dreyman (Sebastian Koch). After bugging Dreyman's flat, Wiesler and another agent listen on their equipment and summarise what they hear in their reports.
Wiesler soon learns the real reason behind the Dreyman surveillance. The Party's Minister of Culture, Bruno Hempf (Thomas Thieme) covets Dreyman's live-in girlfriend, actress Christa-Maria Sieland (Martina Gedeck), and is using his influence with the Stasi to bring Dreyman down, thus ridding himself of a rival. Wiesler, a dedicated socialist, is horrified by the abuse of power this represents. Weisler also sees that Dreyman and Sieland are deeply in love. Sieland has been secretly having sexual relations with Hempf. She is revolted by every encounter, but continues to see him, fearing the danger of rejecting the advances of so powerful a man, who could easily destroy her entire acting career, and her life. She also relies on Hempf to turn a blind eye to her use of illegal prescription drugs.
East-German Playwright Georg Dreyman and his lover, actress Christa-Maria Sieland
Wiesler manages to help Dreyman discover Sieland's relationship with Hempf, and Dreyman implores Sieland to end the affair. Sieland at first refuses to take the risk, but she later reconsiders.
Although a Communist, Dreyman is disillusioned with the way his blacklisted colleagues are treated by the State. Shortly after the apartment is bugged, at Dreyman's birthday party, his friend, Albert Jerska, a blacklisted theatre director, gives him the sheet music to a piece titled "Sonata vom Guten Mensch." Shortly afterwards, Jerska hangs himself. Infuriated, Dreyman decides to anonymously publish an article on concealed suicide rates in the West German periodical Der Spiegel. As all typewriters are registered, Dreyman uses a miniature typewriter smuggled in from West Germany, which he hides under the threshold between two rooms of his apartment. Before selecting the flat as a headquarters, Dreyman and his friends test whether the flat is bugged by a feigned attempt at smuggling. However, Wiesler decides against ringing the border control, and the conspirators are left certain the flat is not bugged.
Although Wiesler intended his inactivity to be a one-off, he starts to change through his surveillance - he starts to lie in his reports to protect Dreyman and reduces surveillance hours to eliminate his assistant. Realising the emptiness of his own life, he steals a book by Bertolt Brecht off Dreyman's desk and reads it himself.
Wiesler reading Bertolt Brecht
Eventually, Dreyman and his friends publish the article, enraging the East German State. Through an agent in Der Spiegel's offices, the Stasi obtains the typed manuscript and realizes that it was written on an unregistered typewriter with red ink. At the same time, Hempf is livid at being jilted by Sieland and orders Grubitz to destroy her. After he informs Grubitz of Sieland's illegal drug addiction, the Stasi catch her red-handed at a dentist in the act of buying them. Breaking under pressure, Sieland reveals Dreyman's authorship of the article. The flat is torn apart by a Stasi search team, who fail to find the typewriter, due to its location. Grubitz orders Wiesler to interrogate Sieland and warns him that failure will cost them both, and Sieland tells him where the typewriter is hidden and agrees to become a Stasi informant. Grubitz then orders a second search of Dreyman's apartment, but Wiesler has already left, ostensibly to conceal the evidence. However, Wiesler is determined to protect the couple and, while Dreyman is out, he breaks in and steals the typewriter.
Upon seeing the horrified look on Dreyman's face as he realises she disclosed its location, a guilt-ridden Sieland runs out of the apartment and into the path of a truck. This is witnessed by Wiesler, who had been hiding the typewriter. Dreyman arrives at the scene and Christa-Maria dies in his arms. Certain that she removed the typewriter to protect him, Dreyman weeps inconsollably, as Grubitz offers a polite but perfunctory claim of sympathy. The surveillance of Dreyman's apartment is terminated. Certain that Wiesler has obstructed the investigation, but having no evidence to prove it, Grubitz demotes him to Department M, where he must tediously steam letters open and read them, and gives him a promotion ban until he retires in 20 years.
Four years later, Wiesler is steaming open letters when a co-worker tells him of the fall of the Berlin Wall. After German reunification, Dreyman, who believed his flat was never bugged, learns from Hempf that he was under full surveillance all along. After uncovering the spying equipment in his house, he goes to the old Stasi museum. Reading his Stasi files there, Dreyman further learns that Sieland was released too late to have removed the typewriter, and seeing a red fingerprint on one of the reports from the typewriter's ink, discovers that Stasi Agent "HGW XX/7" had knowingly covered up his deeds against the State, such as the writing of the suicide article. Deeply moved, Dreyman succeeds in locating Wiesler and watches from a distance as the former Captain goes about his new job, delivering leaflets. Although wishing to thank him, Dreyman cannot bring himself to approach Wiesler. Two years later, Dreyman publishes the novel, "Sonata vom Guten Mensch." At a bookstore, Wiesler opens the book and discovers that it is dedicated "To HGW XX/7, with gratitude". As he purchases the book, he is asked if he wants it gift-wrapped. Wiesler responds, "No, it's for me."
Production
Henckel von Donnersmarck's parents were both from East Germany. He has said that, on visits there as a child before the Berlin Wall fell, he could sense the fear they had as subjects of the state.
He said the idea for the film came to him when he was trying to come up with a movie scenario for a film class. He was listening to music and recalled Maxim Gorky's saying that Lenin's favorite piece of music was Beethoven's Appassionata. Gorky recounted a discussion with Lenin:
And screwing up his eyes and chuckling, [Lenin] added without mirth:
"But I can't listen to music often, it affects my nerves, it makes me want to say sweet nothings and pat the heads of people who, living in a filthy hell, can create such beauty. But today we mustn't pat anyone on the head or we'll get our hand bitten off; we've got to hit them on the heads, hit them without mercy, though in the ideal we are against doing any violence to people. Hm-hm - it's a hellishly difficult office!"
Donnersmarck told a New York Times reporter: "I suddenly had this image in my mind of a person sitting in a depressing room with earphones on his head and listening in to what he supposes is the enemy of the state and the enemy of his ideas, and what he is really hearing is beautiful music that touches him. I sat down and in a couple of hours had written the treatment." The screenplay was written during an extended visit to his uncle's monastery, Heiligenkreuz Abbey.
Donnersmarck had difficulty getting financing for the film. Podhoretz speculated that the reason was a reluctance on the part of the film industry to confront the horrors of East German Communism, although he says it is rich with dramatic possibilities. That may also explain why the organizers of the Berlin Film Festival refused to accept it as an official entry for 2006, the critic wrote.
Prior to his death, Sydney Pollack was said to be directing a possible Hollywood remake of the film.
Critical reaction
American journalist John Podhoretz called the film "one of the greatest movies ever made, and certainly the best film of this decade." William F. Buckley, Jr. wrote in his syndicated column that after the film was over, "I turned to my companion and said, 'I think that this is the best movie I ever saw.'" John J. Miller of National Review Online named it #1 in his list of 'The Best Conservative Movies' of the last 25 years.
A review in Daily Variety by Derek Elley noted the "slightly stylized look" of the movie created by "playing up grays and dour greens, even when using actual locations like the Stasi's onetime HQ in Normannenstrasse."
Time magazine's Richard Corliss named the film one of the Top 10 Movies of 2007, ranking it at #2. Corliss praised the film as a "poignant, unsettling thriller."
Film critic Roger Ebert gave the film four stars, describing it as "a powerful but quiet film, constructed of hidden thoughts and secret desires."
Subtle treatment
Several critics pointed to the film's subtle building up of details as one of its prime strengths.
The film is built "on layers of emotional texture", wrote Stephanie Zacharek in Salon online magazine. "von Donnersmarck seizes upon telling details: In one sequence, as Minister Hempf paws at a female conquest, we get a flash of his giant white underpants, a touch that would be funny if it weren't so subliminally horrific."
At another point in the movie, the main character, Wiesler, becomes enchanted by and sympathetic to the couple he is listening in on. "Wiesler's response to those feelings [...] move in on him imperceptibly, with very little telegraphing, making them that much more convincing," Zacharek writes. Podhoretz, reviewing the movie in The Weekly Standard, ascribes the subtleness of Wiesler's response to Mühe, the actor playing him: "That scene [...] is limned with extraordinary stillness and compressed emotion by Ulrich Mühe, an actor heretofore unknown outside Germany who gives a performance so perfect in this, and every other moment in the film, that it's almost beyond words." Josh Rosenblatt, writing in the Austin Chronicle made the same point: "Like all great screen performances, Mühe's magic comes out most in its tiniest moments: a raised eyebrow here, a slight upturn of the lips there. It's a triumph of muted grandeur [...]"
Lisa Schwarzbaum, writing in Entertainment Weekly, pointed out that some of the subtlety in the movie comes from the audience watching as characters are shown not taking action so much as being confronted by the action around them: "Some of the movie's tensest moments take place with the most minimal of action — Wiesler simply listening through headphones, Dreyman simply lying on his bed, a neighbor simply looking through a door peephole, her whole life contingent on what she does about what she sees. In those nerve-racking pauses (handled by a strong, understated cast), Henckel von Donnersmarck conveys everything he wants us to know about choice, fear, doubt, cowardice, and heroism."
An article in First Things makes a philosophical argument in defense of Wiesler's transformation.
Characterisation
A.O. Scott, reviewing the film in The New York Times, wrote that Lives is well-plotted, and added, "The suspense comes not only from the structure and pacing of the scenes, but also, more deeply, from the sense that even in an oppressive society, individuals are burdened with free will. You never know, from one moment to the next, what course any of the characters will choose."
Los Angeles Times movie critic Kenneth Turan agreed that the dramatic tension of the film comes from being "meticulously plotted", and that "it places its key characters in high-stakes predicaments where what they are forced to wager is their talent, their very lives, even their souls." The movie "convincingly demonstrates that when done right, moral and political quandaries can be the most intensely dramatic dilemmas of all."
Zacharek, Scott, Podhoretz and Turan all make the point that although the film gives a powerful, subtle depiction of the corruption at the core of the East German state, it is focused on how people can rise above the moral corruption in which they're sometimes placed. As Podhoretz puts it, the movie is "a character study in the guise of a stunning suspense thriller."
Criticism
Slavoj Žižek, reviewing the film for In These Times, wrote that it softpedals the oppressiveness of the German Democratic Republic (DDR), as when a dissident confronts the minister of culture and doesn't seem to face any consequences for it. Žižek also says the character of the playwright is simply too naive to be believable: "One cannot but recall here a witty formula of life under a hard Communist regime: Of the three features — personal honesty, sincere support of the regime and intelligence — it was possible to combine only two, never all three. [...] The problem with Dreyman is that he does combine all three features."
Although the opening scene of the film is set in Hohenschönhausen prison, the movie could not be filmed there because Hubertus Knabe, the director of the memorial, refused to give Donnersmarck permission. Knabe objected to "making the Stasi man into a hero" and tried to persuade Donnersmarck to change the movie. Donnersmarck cited Schindler's List as an example of such a plot development being possible. Knabe's answer: "But that is exactly the difference. There was a Schindler. There was no Wiesler." The East German dissident songwriter Wolf Biermann was guardedly enthusiastic about the film, writing in a March 2006 article in Die Welt: "The political tone is authentic, I was moved by the plot. But why? Perhaps I was just won over sentimentally, because of the seductive mass of details which look like they were lifted from my own past between the total ban of my work in 1965 and denaturalisation in 1976."
Anna Funder, the author of a book about the Stasi (Stasiland), wrote in a review of the movie for The Guardian that it was not possible for a Stasi operative to have hidden much information from superiors because Stasi employees themselves were watched and operated in teams, seldom if ever working alone. She noted that in his "Director's statement", Donnersmarck wrote, "More than anything else, The Lives of Others is a human drama about the ability of human beings to do the right thing, no matter how far they have gone down the wrong path." Funder replied: "This is an uplifting thought. But what is more likely to save us from going down the wrong path again is recognising how human beings can be trained and forced into faceless systems of oppression, in which conscience is extinguished." Nevertheless, Funder said, the movie is a "superb film" despite not being true to reality.
Clive Davis, writing in his blog at The Spectator's website, said the film did not convincingly show how Wiesler would have decided to change his ways: "What we saw was a promising idea sabotaged by a muddled and undernourished script." "There was simply no serious motivation provided for this transformation. It was almost as if the writer figured he didn't really need to bother."
Controversy
Donnersmarck and Ulrich Mühe were successfully sued for libel for an interview in which Mühe asserted that his former wife informed on him while they were East German citizens through the six years of their marriage. In the film's publicity material, Donnersmarck says that Mühe's former wife denied the claims, although 254 pages' worth of government records detailed her activities.
Three East-German intellectuals from Das Leben der Anderen
