Harrowing yet moving...

Rating: 10/10 (5 December 2007)

I just finished watching a powerful German film which bagged the Best Foreign Film in the Oscars last year. I rarely use that description for a film: but the powerful aspect of "The Lives of Others" is its message of realistic optimism and compassion amidst the corruption and exploitation of human rights during the last few years of the Socialist Germany. If one is familiar with "Goodbye, Lenin!"'s comic approach on the issue of the fall of the Berlin Wall, he will find the treatment of the story of the characters in "The Lives of Others" far more intense and frightening yet endearing as the secret agent in charge of spying on an artist and his lover becomes too involved in the couple's secret lives. Being a very vigilant servant of the System, Wiesler, the agent, knows that his risk of saving the artists who are attacking the GDR whom he has served for almost all his life is akin to throwing everything that matters to him. But why does he dare? The very answer to that is the gem that one can unfold upon getting involved in the lives of these characters.
The performances were incredibly harrowing yet as moving as a beautifully composed sonata. This masterpiece from the director Von Donnersmarck probably is the best European film of this decade so far.
There is a line at the latter part of the film which caught my attention... which probably is true for any country which underwent a major overhauling of its political system. This is from a character which was once a high officer in the pre-Falling-of-the-Berlin-Wall Germany.
"What is there to write about in this New Germany? Nothing to live in, nothing to rebel against..."
Literature and Art do thrive on human struggle and strife. Adversities are the heat and pressure which crystallize the diamond within us.