Beauty in the darkest of circumstances, is the most beautiful of all.

Rating: 9/10 (10 August 2011)

I can honestly say, this is one of the finest examples of European film. The story is so dark and heart-breaking. In the UK and Northern America, we miss out on so much fabulous cinema because it is not in English, because we are too lazy to read subtitles, or learn a foreign language, but this masterpiece, this work of art, does not disappoint.
It is not a film you enjoy. You will not call it your favourite, discuss it with your friends, or even watch it regularly. You will however be filled with the harrowing knowledge it gives to you. The awful state of affairs in GDR in the 1980s. It will rock your soul. Your very conscience. You will be gripped, unable to look away, and yet desperate to go back to the ignorance of our sheltered lives, after all, isn't it bliss?
The story follows the surveillance of a playwright and his girlfriend in 1985 in Eastern Germany, and how the Captain in charge of the operation becomes intoxicated by their lives, and as such, begins to cover up the very acts he is meant to report. It eventually ends with him preventing the playwright's arrest by hiding the evidence that would have him convicted. The evidence in question a type writer that wrote an article that uncovered the policy in Eastern Germany of no longer recording suicides. The information on where this typewriter was hidden came from the girlfriend of the playwright. She kills herself, overcome by guilt, only for the captain to have already removed the evidence. The ending of the film, several years later sees the Playwright review the files on the surveillance operation on him in a united Germany and he discovers the work of the Captain who had in many ways help conceal the evidence. He finds out who he is and tracks him down. He sees him but he does not approach him. We then see the Captain who is now a postman of some kind walk past a book shop with the playwright's photograph and novel in the window. He goes in and opens a copy to see that is devoted to him. His code name. He buys a copy and the cashier asks him if he'd like it gift- wrapped. He replies: "No, it's for me."
It is the most beautiful ending to a film I have ever seen.