Interesting but flawed

Rating: 5/10 (8 December 2008)

What I like about this movie are the sets, the locations and the editing. As a viewer I could really believe that I am looking into Eastern Germany in the 1980s. The wiring and the ensuing connection between the artist's flat and the cold, drafty attic with the listening post perfectly showed the perverseness and the absurdity of that particular totalitarian system. The highlight for me was, when a guest in the apartment, an enthusiastic journalist from the West, pops the cork of a bottle of champagne. The cork hits a light switch in which a hearing device is hidden, a very quick and short cut to the attic shows how the guy with the headphones winces in silent pain. The movie also makes it very clear that the Socialist systems outmaneuvered themselves with their paranoia  what remains of them are vestiges of Russian style secret service systems (but that is older then Socialism and probably has little to do with it).
What I dislike about this movie is primarily that it is designed as a melodrama. The story is by nature an obscure one. The actions are stealthy ones, almost all that happens happens in the dark. This is transformed into long epic scenes which might attract a mass audience but do not fit the subject matter. I found the overbearing (and often praised) musical score hard to stand. In order to appreciate a melodrama you have to identify with the characters. And this I could not do. It must be said that the people who in this movie were the victims were also people of that totalitarian system. They were successful artists who made a career. They knew amply well how to play" that system and basically supported it. I am sure it was a great privilege to live in a spacious flat in the center of Eastern Berlin. The victims are not half starved idealistic artists who would die for an ideal, they are rather  let's face it  fat cats with a healthy sense for survival. I found their intellectual whining rather sickening. One has to assume that with such a privileged lifestyle it was easy to generate jealousy in members of the surveillance squads (and I am certain this was systematically, tactically done). Therefore it is difficult to believe in the development of goodness" in the main character. The movie intimates that it is triggered by music the listener hears in the apartment. I did not find that very convincing.