Suspenseful, Nuanced Character Study Puts a Spotlight on a Little Known Aspect of the Cold War

Rating: 9/10 (23 September 2007)

Five long years before the Berlin Wall fell, the Stasi, East Germany's secret police, was at the height of its infiltrative power with one in every fifty citizens cooperating with them in sniffing out any scent of political dissidence. To the Western world, it's a relatively unknown piece of Cold War history, but the Stasi's repressive force permeated all aspects of German society. First-time director and screenwriter Florian Henckel von Donnersmark makes a most auspicious debut with this mesmerizing, epic-length 2006 study of the Stasi's devastating impact on a trio of characters in pre-glasnost East Berlin.
The protagonist is Captain Gerd Wiesler, who is initially a rigid, humorless master of relentless, soul-baring interrogation techniques highly prized by the regime. He seems so utterly uncompromising that one would have expected a story to evolve that is closer in spirit to a classic Cold War espionage thriller like John LeCarre's The Spy Who Came in From the Cold. However, von Donnersmark digs deeper into the conflicted psyche of this seemingly Machiavellian character by placing him in a situation where he is constantly monitoring the activities of renowned playwright Georg Dreyman and his lover, actress Christa-Maria Sieland, in their shared apartment.
Although Dreyman has shown no signs of defying the current regime, Wiesler is ordered by his old classmate Grubitz, now the head of the Stasi's Culture Department, to put the couple under surveillance. What then evolves as the plot thickens is an unspoken bonding of spirits among Wiesler, Dreyman and Sieland as the inherent contradictions between artistic and political expression become more and more pronounced. Wiesler becomes disillusioned when he realizes that the motivation for monitoring the artistic couple is Minister Hempf's unsavory interest in Sieland. Meanwhile, Dreyman ironically does have his political consciousness raised after his blacklisted playwriting mentor kills himself. What transpires is surprising yet most fitting.
The performances are uniformly solid beginning with Ulrich Mühe's implosively searing portrayal of Wiesler. For the most part, it's a subtle turn highlighted by powerfully cathartic moments such as his response to Dreyman's playing of a piece called "Sonata for a Good Man". It does beg comparisons to Gene Hackman's Harry Caul in Francis Ford Coppola's classic surveillance thriller, The Conversation. Sebastian Koch and Martina Gedeck are equally riveting as the conflicted Dreyman and the increasingly desperate Sieland, who haltingly faces her own dilemma of betrayal. Adding immeasurably to the fatalistic, Orwellian atmosphere that von Donnersmark creates are Gabriel Yared's evocative music (including the beautiful sonata) and Hagen Bogdanski's burnished cinematography.
The one drawback is the 137-minute length, which I found slightly excessive, especially toward the end, for the relatively intimate story being told. The filmmaker provides an informative and often enthusiastic commentary track on the 2007 DVD, though most of the major points are captured in the half-hour featurette, "Interview with Director Florian Henckel von Donnersmark". There is also a twenty-minute making-of short which includes interviews with the producers and principal cast, as well as eight deleted scenes.