I belatedly came to see this movie knowing nothing about the plot. Mesmerizingly acted and strangely moving.

Rating: 10/10 (18 August 2007)

When my father visited me on a trip, we are obliged to go to the movies.
The problem was there are no interesting movies in the month of May. Hollywood productions are slick with the emphasis on visual eye candy (like Spider-Man 3). We opted to see The Lives of Others when it came up on the Yahoo Movies theatre listing, remembering having heard the movie won an Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film.
As I have commented on that other nominated movie previously, Pan's Labyrinth lost the Oscar, deservedly because of its repulsive horror content. Contrast a morbid historical fantasy movie emphasizing the evils of Fascism to an evenly paced and tightly plotted movie that sent the genuine shock wave ripple effect to the movie lovers who desperately wanted Mexican director Guellermo del Toro to grab an Academy Award at last. I honestly expected Pan's Labyrinth to win the coveted prize, but I was nonetheless pleased with the outcome even though I never heard of The Lives of Others.
I kept missing the movie for a couple months because of busy schedule. Then it disappeared in mid-April. I was dismayed that I would have to wait for video. But when my father came over to visit me, the movie popped up unexpectedly on the theatre listing for the last-chance one-week engagement. I had never heard of a movie *returning * to the theatre nearly a month after the initial run, so I thought it might be a must-see.
I refuse to explain what the movie is about. That's not only redundant but for an excellent reason. My father and I came in knowing *nothing* about the basic plot except that it won an Oscar. The lack of pre-screening knowledge contributed to one of the best cinematic experiences my father and I had ever experienced. The screening was nearly packed with older moviegoers and I was surprised to see younger high school and college-age boys and girls. I thought American young people don't even bother to see a foreign language movie with English subtitles because of their natural predisposition to avoid any movie that have English subtitles requiring them to read, much to their irritation. Apocalypto is another movie like that, but The Lives of Others is a heavy drama and I found it very unorthodox that young people would bother to see the movie unless they take German language class for credits.
When the ending was concluded on a grand note, it moved the whole audience to lump throat and tears. I had not seen this widely affecting reaction since Titanic. We had misty eyes but resisted tears to drop only because we didn't bring Kleenex. The fact that it's not only well-made in structure, pacing and cinematography but also feature the finest ensemble acting in a long time is a testimony to the artistic expression of cinema that is both entertaining and profound. The Lives of Others is almost neo-realist to an extent that the audience feel empathy for the few characters.
Ulrich Mühe, the German equivalent of Kevin Spacey, gave one of the best male performances ever captured on film. This is not a single-minded praise. I have seen very few performances that are astonishingly in-depth in raising the bar of acting to impossible heights. Wonderful examples are Daniel Day Lewis in My Left Foot and Gangs of New York; Peter Finch as Howard Beale in Network; Russell Crowe in The Insider; Warren Oates in Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia; Anthony Hopkins in The Silence of the Lambs and Peter Sellers in Being There. Ulrich deserves a memorial in cinematic history for the incredible broad range of tight expression in nuanced facial and body language not usually achieved since the Silent era.
I highly recommend The Lives of Others; there's no other words to describe the experience I had watching the movie in the screening. It's pure cinema magic that is so rare in philosophically profound movie-going experience one may experience it once every decade.
William F. Buckley, Jr, the editor in chief of the right-wing magazine National Review, wrote a column that commend the aesthetic and artistic quality of the movie by stating it's the best movie he had ever seen. Normally I am aversive to radical right-wing ideologues, but this time I agree with William's view.
The movie is R rated for nudity and sex scenes, but it's such a profoundly moving picture that I urge my strictly conservative mother, who despise R-rated movies because of vulgar content she find abhorrent, and she agreed to view the movie after the arrival of the video release. I never recommend R-rated movies to my mother with the sole exception of Dancer in the Dark, but The Lives of Others have won my respect enough to recommend to her.
**** out of 4