Continuing with my foreign films theme after City Of God, the next title I wanted to share is The Lives Of Others from my “Contemporary Films” series through ASU. Although at first glance the title may sound like an afternoon tv soap opera, The Lives Of Others is regarded by many critics as one of the best films of the past two decades and was nominated for numerous international film awards. It did win the Academy Award for best foreign film of 2006 along with the British BAFTA Award (for Best Film Not In The English Language).
The story is mainly concerned with the monitoring and surveillance of citizens in what had been East Berlin, East Germany prior to the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of communist rule in Eastern Europe. Prior to these major historical events the Ministry For State Security or “Stasi” loomed oppressively to maintain tight control over the East German population from 1950 to 1990 (much like the KGB in Soviet Russia). Though the story is intriguing, and historically important, everyone responds to narratives differently – where perceptions, preferences, and tastes are subjective. Here are my impressions of The Lives Of Others for a course assignment which were rather different than prevailing critical views of the story.
Back in 2011 I wrote: The Lives Of Others is a sparse production for a story revolving around intrigue and surveillance. I expected the film to have more background ambience in many of the exterior scenes accompanied with that underlying buzz of fear and tension peculiar to stories about repressive regimes of the Cold War period. For a story occurring entirely within Berlin, the capital of East Germany (or German Democratic Republic), and a large city – the overall look and feel was emptier than it should have been. Then again, maybe this is exactly what the director was going for. It may have been intentional to express how empty and lacking this particular brand of neurotic, paranoid socialism really was.
One disappointing aspect of The Lives Of Others was that it allowed for too much exposition and was predictable. Though a fascinating aspect of the film, the teaching of interrogation techniques as a university course in the first fifteen minutes or so, revealed too much of the story for my taste. The instructor/ interrogator Gerd Weisler (played by Ulrich Muhe) and the Stasi official Anton Grubitz (played by Ulrich Tukur) immediately meet up as the class ends, and the Stasi official invites the interrogator to the the theatre – where it quickly becomes too apparent who is going to be placed under surveillance and for what purpose. Artists as subversives are not exactly an original concept, and playwright Georg Dreyman (Sebastian Koch) and directors are the usual suspects.
I wish there had been more suspense and ambiguity in the story, but it was entirely prosaic. The use of color, all the drab browns and greenish-grey hues were completely expected and entirely suitable to the needs of the film. Otherwise, The Lives Of Others might be lacking enough of the appropriately somber mood these types of stories require. However, the cinematography, color scheme, plot, or set design is not where The Lives Of Others excels. The soul smothering circumstances of existence are heavily felt in the story along with the bitterness and resentment that has to be repressed while feigning slavish loyalty to an intolerable, hateful political and social system that very few escaped from…alive.
It’s entirely reasonable that such a harsh regime and it’s cumbersome bureaucracy would conceal statistics about suicides as they are completely incongruous with the socialist vision of paradise. Emotional and psychological listlessness are prevalent for all the characters in the film, although, by the conclusion only one Christa-Maria succumbs after being intensely pressured, threatened with personal and professional ruin and backed into the corner of utter despair. While a mostly predictable storyline, what makes the film really work on the gut level and pierces the heart – is that the events depicted are entirely, distressingly plausible. At the least, The Lives Of Others serves as a composite memorial to the real people who actually suffered the indignities and injustices of life behind the aptly named “Iron Curtain” for more than four decades.
However, I must add a point that stood out to me as being quite unrealistic. This was when Dreyman convinces his colleagues that he would not be subjected to bugging-type surveillance and that his apartment was safe for everyone to speak freely. From anything that I’ve ever read about existence behind the Iron Curtain or watched in documentaries about communist regimes, that was definitely not the case – especially for any public figure involved in the arts. They are among the types of people that oppressive governments are most concerned about. Intellectuals or those that fancy themselves as such are the easiest targets and usually have the most to lose.
