1984 in Real Life -- Possible Spoilers

Rating: 10/10 (7 December 2009)

Set in East Berlin in the mid-1980's -- "The Life of Others" in the version shown in the United States -- this film comes closer to bringing Orwell's terrifying satire to life than any other picture I've seen about life behind the Iron Curtain. A free-thinking but cautious playwright, Georg Dreyman (Sebastian Koch), is targeted by the Stasi, the notorious East German secret police, because a powerful minister, Hempf (Thomas Thieme), wants to have the noted actress and Dreyman's live-in girlfriend, Christa-Maria Sieland (Martina Gedeck), available to him sexually whenever he wants. A Stasi officer, Gerd Wiesler, (Ulrich Muhe) is assigned by his superior, Grubitz (Ulrich Tukur), the task of wiring Dreyman's apartment and collecting the necessary incriminating evidence. Interplay between Hempf, Grubitz, and Wiesler displays a menacing hierarchical relationship while Dreyman goes about his business believing he is free of suspicion. Meanwhile, Ms. Sieland is under direct pressure from oily Minister Hempf to surrender her body as the price of being allowed to perform her craft. Wiesler's growing sympathy for Ms. Sieland and for Dreyman seems highly improbable and the outcome is melodramatic -- but it is a movie, after all, and improbabilities and melodrama are coin of the realm. The writer and director, Florian Henckel von Donnenmarck, deserves all the honors he won for this film, including a best foreign film Oscar