Lives of Others

Lives of Others is one of the best if not one of the most affecting films I’ve seen in some time. It takes place in East Germany before the fall of the wall, at the time when the Stasi (the East German internal surveillance agency, the Ministerium für Staatssicherheit, or roughly the Ministry for State Security, spied on much of the population. As many as one out of every 50 Germans was a collaborator (this does not mean willingly) or one informer to every seven citizens (sourced from Wikipedia).

Its the sort of film that makes me sad and angry, like when I’ve read other accounts where governments declare war or unreasonably repress their own citizens such as in Stalin’s Russia or Mao’s China. It also touches on that theme which crops up from time to time of the interrogation of the true believer, and the turning of the believer into a dissident when they see the professed ideals of the state being treated as garbage by the state itself. Or recently in Goya’s Ghosts with the Spanish Inquisition. The oppressors do not believe their own demands of belief.

The performances, the plot, the writing and the production are close to perfect. Beautifully photographed and narratively nuanced. And a great ending.

It has one moment that really separated it from the usual where after the fall, where one of our protagonists bumps into one of the major villains which in near every other film would have resulted in a deserved execution, or at the very least a pummelling of the man, and though we long for the just desserts to be delivered, the film stays true to how life works, and it just doesn’t happen. He walks on to the rest of his life and the bill is never paid. Frustrating but realistically satisfying.