Probably the best film of 2006

Rating: 9/10 (12 March 2007)

Even though The Departed may be judged by most to be more powerful and shocking, this film shocks but it also saddens, and then encourages the heart in a unique way that senses-bludgeoning films like The Departed cannot...in the inexorable and certain life-draining way that only stories detailing the harsh realities of a life without hope can do, and then which show a complete about face and tell the resulting story of total transformation and its effects on the same people. Always difficult to do, but was done with brilliance in this film.
Most of this film was about people's unhappy lives without hope under Socialism, but then come the transformations, individual and national, that change everything. This film develops the story of dreary but threatening communist "hope oppression" better than any I can remember since the '50's film, "1984". Without hope to encourage us, what else is there to the real value of life?
The very soulful and talented Urich Muhe(his features hint of Kevin Spacey) plays the role of a hardened national police captain who is the central screw on which the story turns, a totally committed socialist party cop who undergoes a complete, but not overtly joyful, change of heart that works to alter forever the fortunes of the story's foil, a writer/playwright of increasingly "questionable" political views who, as a result, becomes a central target of the Stasi, the national security police that was shown to be ubiquitous and all-powerful, and every bit as formidable and scary as the outrageously inhuman "Big Brother" that terrified citizens in "1984".
Early on, Muhe played the police captain as a Jack Webb/Joe Friday-type cop.....humorless, cold, stiff and ruthlessly committed to doing the best but also the meanest job he could do in a mean business to root out any and all political dissenters. Muhe's role interpretation in his gradual but complete transformation to the other side personally and politically was nothing less than acting brilliance, and probably the best acting of the year in any film. Don't miss it, as you will be missing rare acting greatness if you do, and at least the equal to the brilliance of Massimo Triosi in Il Postino.
Also, along with the greatest movie-ending lines in history, the very last line in this film summed up everything that happened before in the best and fewest words possible, and it will surely move you greatly, not only from immense sadness and pity for what happened to the disgraced former cop but also from great hope and gratitude for the people in this world who finally see the true light as did Muhe's transformed police captain, and then put it to work bettering the world even though the personal cost may be great. An heroic act of course, but even more, one worthy of emulation by all of us.
"The Lives of Others" was so emotionally powerful throughout but nearly overwhelming at the end, as it showed so well one of the greatest life-lessons that can be learned by anyone, and one never to be forgotten....some of your good deeds will be rewarded in some way.
(added 1/23/08: one of the best movies and lead role acting in decades. Urich Muhe died recently, and what a tragic loss of talent and person. His death makes me also sadly grieve the similar fates of the magnificent Massimo Triosi of Il Postino, and the creative genius Adrienne Shelley of Waitress....both also died much too young right after their highly acclaimed triumphs in those films.)