The Lives of Others
I'm sorry to break radio silence with something as mundane as a movie review. But I just need to share.
I've mentioned before I don't like to use my blog for movie reviews even though I watch movies all the time. I just can't write reviews that truly satisfy me. Whenever I try to write a cogent movie review, they all end up sounding something like: "Hey, this is a good movie. Go see it." or "Don't watch this movie. It's bad." I can never adequately explicate to others precisely what about a movie is good, what is unredeeming, and why you should see it. I had the same problem with book reports. It was always incredibly difficult for me to succinctly convey the merits of a book using clean, trenchant prose. If you remember my book report on Myra Breckinridge in Mr. Antonio's ninth-grade English class, you know what I'm talking about.
Over the weekend, I watched The Lives of Others. It received an Oscar this year for best foreign language film. The movie takes place in East Germany shortly before the fall of the Wall. The Stasi - the East German state police - is using its 100,000 employees and 200,000 informants to surveil everyone, including Georg Dreyman, a playwright and author. Gerd Wiesler is given the job of finding something the state can use against Dreyman. Wiesler conducts 24-hour eavesdropping on Dreyman's apartment.
Maybe it's because I remember the Cold War, the propaganda coming from the GDR, the grip of the East German Communists on the population, that this movie appealed to me. Maybe it was the acting of Ulrich Mühe and Martina Gedeck. Maybe it's because the current US administration seems hellbent on using tactics - wiretaps on citizens without warrants and denial of habeas corpus are two examples - that are not the moral superior to those of the Stasi that I found this movie so captivating. The Lives of Others is the best movie I've seen in a very long time.
Anyway, now you understand why I don't write movie reviews.
K-
Been wanting to see it for a while. Your review is similar to others I've seen but I suspect those too young to remember The Cold War will not be impacted the same way.
Cold War or no Cold War, I think this kind of scenario -- individuals in a battle for survival against a state or power that would kill whatever is individual in them -- has always been compelling to me; it's the essential premise of stories like "Fahrenheit 451" and "1984" and "The Spy Who Came in from the Cold," and tales like "The Lives of Others" are all the more gripping for having come from the real world.