REVIEW: The Lives Of Others (Das Leben der Anderen)

Apr - 05 | By: Josh Nelson | no comments.

Winner of the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar at the recent Academy Awards, writer-director Florian Henkel von Donnersmarck’s The Lives Of Others is one of the most accomplished feature film debuts in recent memory. Set in East Berlin before the fall of the Berlin Wall, the film revolves around Stasi captain Weisler (Ulrich Muhe) entrusted with the job of spying on a successful playwright Dreyman (Sebastian Koch) suspected of anti-party activities. Gradually, as Weisler becomes increasingly vested in the lives of Dreyman and his performer-girlfriend, Christa-Maria (Martina Gedeck), he begins to question his own affiliation with the GDR.

However, while the film is, on the surface, a historical-political drama, the narrative gives much greater weight to the human dimension that lies at its core. Raising questions about power, responsibility and morality, Weisler, who is initially established as the film’s antagonist, increasingly becomes the audience’s point of identification within the drama that unfolds. And it is the very stage of human drama that serves as an allegory for the interactions between the characters as Weisler’s surveillance transcripts start to resemble Dreyman’s plays. Von Donnersmarck seems to suggesting that it is art, whether theatre, literature or music, that has the power to transform and transcend the oppressiveness and dehumanising aspects of the GDR regime.

In a crucial turning point, Weisler becomes moved to the point of tears as he listens in to Dreyman’s piano performance, the pointedly entitled “Sonata for a Good Man”. For a brief moment the sequence lifts the film from the intentionally overbearing dreariness of the film’s colour pallet – muted greys and browns that belie an otherwise lightless existence. Even if the film gradually forgoes its political critique for one more grounded in its characters, The Lives of Others is a powerful and emotionally satisfying experience.