The Lives of Others DVD

The Lives of Others works foremost as a powerful and involving thriller, enormously relevant to an age where surveillance is omnipresent, and where individual libertie... Read on

The Lives of Others works foremost as a powerful and involving thriller, enormously relevant to an age where surveillance is omnipresent, and where individual liberties can no longer be taken for granted.
Stasi-controlled East Germany is chillingly brought to life in von Donnersmarck's Oscar-winning debut film, in which Captain Wiesler (Ulrich Mühe) is assigned to monitor the activity of celebrated playwright Georg Dreyman (Sebastian Koch, the 'good Nazi' in Black Book) and his actress lover Christa-Maria Sieland, at the behest of a corrupt government minister who has designs on the latter.
Mühe's superbly calibrated performance – one of the actor's last before his death in July – reveals his character's emotional journey as Wiesler becomes entranced and transformed by the couple's relationship and the ideals they come to represent.
The couple's everyday lives and intimacies are viewed through a combination of binoculars, rear-view mirrors and electronic bugging equipment. Brilliantly filmed, The Lives of Others offers further proof – alongside The Conversation and Red Road – of how good cinema is at portraying the act of surveillance.
Von Donnersmarck is careful to depict the details of the regime: the Stasi's preferred interrogation methods; prostitutes who adhere to strict schedules in the interests of greater efficiency; the way informers were shuttled about in fishmongers' vans, like fresh bait - or just as so much small fry.
The film's narrative vividly depicts the trickledown effect of state-sanctioned oppression: how loved ones and neighbours were recruited to tell tales, or forced to look on in silent complicity. Iron fists need all their fingers – even the little ones – to be in alignment to exert their grip.
Heart-wrenching and utterly engrossing, The Lives of Others is insightful on a human as well as on political level; this breakthrough world cinema hit is fully deserving of all its success. Hide

Winner of the Oscar for Best Foreign Film, the The Lives of Others is a haunting look at the paranoia of the East German security apparatus in the year 1984, a paranoi... Read on

Winner of the Oscar for Best Foreign Film, the The Lives of Others is a haunting look at the paranoia of the East German security apparatus in the year 1984, a paranoia that ended only with the dismantling of the Berlin Wall in November, 1989 and the eventual reunification of East and West. Written and directed by 33-year old Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck who grew up in West Berlin, the film shows the Stasi using intimidation and disorientation as tools in operating a ruthless system of control and surveillance directed at artists and intellectuals suspected of opposing the GDR.

Set in East Berlin five years before glasnost, the film captures the grey atmosphere of an authoritarian state showing its drably furnished apartments, bare offices, and empty streets. As the film begins, Stasi Captain Gerd Wiesler (Ulrich Muehe) uses videotape to educate recruits about Stasi interrogation methods. Later, Wielser expresses suspicion about the true loyalties of playwright Georg Dreyman (Sebastian Koch) and his girlfriend, the popular stage actress Christa-Maria Sieland (Martina Gedeck).

Wiesler has Dreyman's apartment wired from top to bottom. As Wiesler sits in his dark office plugged into his headsets and tape recorder, he observes Dreyman and Christa going about their lives and it is not a comfortable experience for him. The gradual exposure of the expressionless bureaucrat to a different way of life that includes music, literature, and freedom of expression leads him to look at his life in a new way, a way that makes clear the arrogance of his superiors. It is the catalyst for a surprising plot that has numerous twists and turns and ends up as a powerful depiction of what it means to be human.
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