9 April 2007
By Hemanth Kissoon
“To know everything”, declared goal of the Stasi.
In his novel Fatherland, set in an alternate reality where the Nazis won the Second World War and Hitler is approaching his 75th birthday, Robert Harris wrote: in a police state criminals rule.
It is 1984, East Germany. Glasnost is not yet in place. The cold hand of Communist autocracy strangles the population. The secret police force, the Stasi, monitors state subversive behaviour. Hauptmann Gerd Wiesler (Mühe), expert interrogator and teacher at a Stasi training college, is itching to get back into the field. At a new play by respected writer Georg Dreyman (Koch) Wiesler has a hunch that this ostensible proponent of the East German nation is actually against it. Wiesler volunteers to begin an eavesdropping operation to catch out the playwright. A gripping high-stakes game is set in motion triggering self-discovery and shifting ambiguous allegiances.
“To know everything”, declared goal of the Stasi.
In his novel Fatherland, set in an alternate reality where the Nazis won the Second World War and Hitler is approaching his 75th birthday, Robert Harris wrote: in a police state criminals rule.
It is 1984, East Germany. Glasnost is not yet in place. The cold hand of Communist autocracy strangles the population. The secret police force, the Stasi, monitors state subversive behaviour. Hauptmann Gerd Wiesler (Mühe), expert interrogator and teacher at a Stasi training college, is itching to get back into the field. At a new play by respected writer Georg Dreyman (Koch) Wiesler has a hunch that this ostensible proponent of the East German nation is actually against it. Wiesler volunteers to begin an eavesdropping operation to catch out the playwright. A gripping high-stakes game is set in motion triggering self-discovery and shifting ambiguous allegiances.
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Like INFERNAL AFFAIRES/THE DEPARTED there are hardly any action sequences, instead compelling storylines with characters you care about in deep peril. Unlike the mega-budget spy franchises (Bourne, Bond, Bauer, Bristow and Hunt) this is realistic, credible and tragic; staying with you long after the credits roll. The thrills and spills of a blockbuster are definitely welcome, but exciting character driven fare has been sparse of late. The 70s had ALL THE PRESIDENT’S MEN, THREE DAYS OF THE CONDOR and THE CONVERSATION. The current suspicion on the world stage makes relevant a discussion of freedom/repression and there attendant costs; hence anti-McCarthy witch-hunts in GOOD NIGHT, AND GOOD LUCK, CIA foundation in THE GOOD SHEPHERD and Ang Lee’s upcoming spy-romance LUST, CAUTION. Lest we forget also the Berlin Wall only fell less than 20 years ago.
“Your subjects are enemies of socialism. Never forget that.” Wiesler
THE LIVES OF OTHERS focuses on these two men who both actually believe in collectivism and their country, but state paranoia catalyses an awakening that creates doubt on a personal, national and ideological level. Wiesler is an idealist. Even though he is a torturer he genuinely thinks he is rooting out the worst sort of person, while Dreyman’s play, Faces of Love, honours the ordinary factory worker.
The dense emotions and evolving morality are impressively portrayed by the spot-on cast. Mühe has a Guy Pearce-like quality of not needing to say anything to convey a spectrum of feelings and thoughts. Koch, last seen on these shores as Müntze in BLACK BOOK, is not over-shadowed and conveys a growing quiet heroism. They are surrounded by striking support - the ambitious girlfriend Christa-Maria (Gedeck), dry-wit best friend (Hans-Uwe Bauer), broken theatre director pal (Volkmar Kleinert), Wiesler‘s boss (Ulrich Tukur) and sleazy culture minister (Thomas Thieme). The film shares a similar spirit to apartheid drama CATCH A FIRE and Indian independence epic GANDHI in how totalitarianism can turn the honest into saviour figures, and thus can be argued to be a celebration of human fortitude.
Ace debutant writer-director, von Donnersmarck, is not flashy but delivers fantastic pacing and intense pathos. THE LIVES OF OTHERS is an interesting counter-argument to ‘Ost-algia’ (nostalgia for East Germany) that GOODBYE LENIN! tapped into. Living there in the 80s is unlikely to have been the fun portrayed by Daniel Brühl.
There appears to be a reticence in this country to embrace German cinema, but our European film-making brothers are currently knocking them out of the park: THE EDUKATORS, DOWNFALL, ATOMISED and PERFUME. THE LIVES OF OTHERS joins them. It questions blind-faith so excellently, and is an ode to self-expression.
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