Who's Watching the Watchmen

Rating: 10/10 (22 April 2013)

I tend to avoid subtitles in films these days. I always end up missing something and having to rewind, and of course you end up with a somewhat broken visual experience. I made an exception for this film though as I'd read somewhere that it was worth a watch.
I have to say, as a layman, I find it very tough to fault this film. I'm generally wary of hype but it's totally justified in this case. So much care has gone into the writing, stylisation, visuals, casting, acting, direction, editing, sound. I think they really wanted to tell this story right. And they succeeded.
Set in East Germany in the mid 1980s, you get a fly-on-the-wall look at how the Stasi(secret police) operated, and the ubiquitous menace it sowed into people's every day lives. Moreover you get an insight into the precarious plight of the artist living under such a regime, i.e. either he sells out and produces safe art that doesn't challenge those in power, or is true to himself but risks surveillance, interrogation, an end to his career or worse.
The central story is of a playwright who is in good standing with the government at the beginning of the film but falls foul of a corrupt government minister who takes a shine to his girlfriend. Ordering the Stasi to conduct full surveillance on the playwright's home, the minister then brutally pursues the girlfriend. The rest of the film follows the interplay between the watcher(a particularly expedient Stasi officer), his superior, the watchees, and the government minister.
Superbly well-acted all round. Just a well-rounded piece of work. So easy to watch. It really transports you to a different place and time. You get a feel for the spartan nature of that society, the apparent havens of normality within, but of course all ultimately at the mercy of the powers that be.
A beautifully crafted study of how fear and consequence influence art, the ugliness of corruption in a society where people have no power, and how divisions of good and evil aren't nearly as black and white as we would like to believe.