The Lives of Others

About 14 million years ago (or last summer, if you want to pick nits) my friend Jon recommended that I watch the Lives of Others. Not long after that I saw the DVD on sale so I picked it up fully intending to watch it directly.

Fast forward many months and I've finally gotten around to it. Better late than never, I s'pose.

A not-too-quick aside: I work full time nights so I frequently miss outings to movies with friends and family so I've lazily adopted an "I'll wait for the DVD" attitude for most of my movie viewing. Working at nights also keeps me from becoming engrossed in most prime time television. I know that a DVR would solve this issue, but I have too much crap to watch already. Thus more DVD's make their way into my life. I (barely) work a second job at a Hastings Entertainment store where (for those of you who don't know what that is we sell movies, music, books, magazines, and general pop culture ephemera) I'm always buying things, too many things, and they go into piles to be watched/read/listened to in due time. I did a little math the other day and (not counting my Netflix movies) I've got over 300 hours of unwatched movie/TV DVD's in my apartment.

So I've finally watched The Lives of Others, it was under Ratatouille (watched it, loved it) and on top of Blade Runner: the Final Cut (haven't watched this version yet) and I must admit that I absolutely am in awe of this film.

It is set in East Germany in the 1980's in the bad days of disintegrating Communism that led up to the fall of the Berlin Wall. It is a wonderful meditation on loyalties within a corrupt and failing system.
An East German Stasi member, Herr Wiesler, is set to spy on a writer, Georg Dreyman, to find out if he is a Western sympathyzer. As the story unfolds, Wiesler begins to understand a point of view far different that the only one he seems to know. As Dreyman and his friends discuss, and ultimately, write a 'subversive' article for a West German newspaper, Wiesler develops compassion for them and their actions. Things soon take a turn for the worse when a party Minister, who is in love with Dreyman's girlfriend, has her arrested merely out of spite. Wiesler must choose between his Party and his newfound understanding of Dreyman.
For a movie with such huge themes, it is a small and intimate look at desperate lives that continually search the face of their world and find it wanting.
Deliberately paced and with an eye toward the minutae of confined relationships, this is a meticulous yet powerful film that deserves your attention.