The Walls Have Ears.

Rating: 7/10 (6 January 2010)

Sebastian Koch, the central figure -- well, one of the central figures -- is a talented actor with one of those plausible European faces and demeanors. He's not gruffly sexy like George Clooney. He's not smoothly handsome like Tom Cruise. He has utility features that can take any part that requires a sympatico character.
In "The Lives of Others" he's a playwright in the 1980s stuck on the wrong side of the Berlin Wall, haunted by the Stasi, the State Security Police, because the possibility exists in the minds of authorities that he and any other artists must secretly harbor dissident thoughts, and we can't have that.
So the Stasi plant bugs all over his apartment and install a monitor in the cellar, Hauptmann Gerd Wiesler, who signs his reports "HGW".
The authorities are right, in a way. Koch and his live-in girl friend and star actress in his plays, do have a lot of politically active visitors. Pretty soon, Wiesler, that joyless cellar rat, is witness to all kinds of subversive conversational exchanges in addition to frequent "vigorous intimate events." But a strange thing happens. Wiesler, an almost stereotypical bad guy who never smiles or cracks a joke, begins to change as a consequence of looking into the unrestrained life of artists and intellectuals. It's like the Heisenberg principle in reverse. Observing the object results in a change in the observer. And Wiesler starts altering his reports, leaving out any suspicious conversations, listening raptly to Koch's piano playing a moody and elegant piece written by a friend and titled "Sonata for a Good Man."
There isn't space to outline the entire plot, which is deliberately paced and clearly not intended for kids munching popcorn and getting high on energy drinks. You have to have patience for events to unfold. And unfold they do, with increasing rapidity, until there are some exceedingly tense searches for hidden objects, some self-indulgent squealing on the part of people who shouldn't squeal, and penultimately a cothurnal accident and the death of someone who has been squeezed beyond endurance by the state.
In the denouement, some years after the wall falls, Koch decides to look up his own Stasi file in the archives. There he learns the truth. Every guilty move that he, his lover, and his friends made, was overheard by Wiesler, the pale slug downstairs, who decided to save Koch's Speck. The pages of the report are signed merely "HGW XXVII." But Koch is inspired to find out the name and identity of his underground friend and savior, although he doesn't contact him.
In the final scene, Wiesler, now a humble mailman dragging himself through the graffiti-ridden slums, wanders into a book store and locates Koch's new book, "Sonata for a Good Man: A Novel." The dedication reads: "To HGW." The clerk asks if Wiesler would like the purchase gift wrapped and Wiesler, without expression, replies, "No. It's for me." I found that ending both clarifying and emotionally moving. There were no more loose ends.
It's a powerful film. I recommend it but, as I say, it requires some attention, especially for the first third, which moves along slowly. The last half picks up. If you make it that far, you probably won't want to leave it without seeing the end.