Simply the best

Rating: 10/10 (30 January 2009)

The Lives of Others is the best German film I have ever seen. Thankfully, I am too young to have seen anything of WW2, but this Cold War drama is stunningly real to me. The superb cast and direction gives an edge of seat tension seldom seen nowadays. I visited East Berlin in the 1970's and was full of Cold War concepts of misplaced wonderment! I was fortunate to have lived in the reunited Germany in the 1990's and to see Eastern Berlin again. Memory was fresh enough to fill me with a very different kind of wonderment. The lessons of the USSR and it's satellites would be well remembered today, as governments in the EU try to rewrite the democratic dictionary. Stay alert and watch this fantastic film.