The Story With No Words

Rating: 9/10 (4 September 2007)

It's the second time I've watched Das Leben der Anderen this year. That my initial viewing was less satisfying than the second, is the first thing I have to report. I've thought about the reason why and I believe to have stumbled upon one: with all the facts in, I could look more closely at the story of the man behind the story. A story of no words.
My first impression of this tale about the good old German STASI and its ways was that it might be a bit too optimistic. I bet my grandfather, who at his own time has been through the mystique of communist interrogations, would agree and deem it a propagandistic fairytale. As far as I'm concerned, now that I've come to terms with the aforementioned reality, I suppose I can accept that people such as HGW might well have existed and might just as well have been overlooked by this new, gracious system which engulfed the former "democratic republics" of the time. The world is full of people who undertake less obvious leaps for man and small steps for mankind.
I'd still rather have had Guillermo Del Toro's Labyrinth win the Oscar for Best Foreign Film, but it's surely not unusual for the deciding factors to prefer a deep story of human redemption to an actual R-rated fairy-tale. Fact of the matter is, both these films (Labyrinth and Life of Others) were films of totally superior class to the productions nominated for Best Picture at the same awards, which only comes to show (once more) how hollow prizes can be.
So why should you watch this amazing debut film, you might ask. Well, it's firstly because it's a modern day, more personal and more subtle Schindler-story and secondly because it offers some insight into an atrocious system, one that is often underrated as far as its inhumanity goes. Also, Sebastian Koch and the late Ulrich Muhe portray their characters in a most immersive manner, highlighting one very important fact: it's human nature that both sustained and eroded the communist system in its extreme form.