Indisputably a masterpiece

Rating: 9/10 (24 April 2007)

This film is a must-see, especially for those born in the 70's like me. Behind the same events that we have watched on the news there were real lives, lives that seemed ordinary but were actually lived under the frightening control of Stasi. Ordinary people were forced to live in lie and suspect, and their lives could be shattered for a word or the caprice of a party executive. This films depicts all that with compassion but without any 'rehabilitating sympathy'.
You will see a variation of Wim Wenders' 'angel' topic - the Stasi watchdog acts like Wenders' angels in the life of Christa. He is a know-all character (not because of divine nature but because he has been spying everything that's going on in the house) and cannot reveal himself, but succeeds in changing the course of events with a minimal intervention.
The parallel with Nazism is very smartly dealt with, in a rather symbolic way, in the scene where Christa dies - a close-up on her face shows she's wearing a white bathrobe with a yellow, five-pointed star on it. Lovely!
I praise the German film maker, who is continuing a very interesting process in which the German are reconsidering and re-evaluating their history. Sadly, Germany is the only country in the world to have suffered from both Nazi and Communist dictatorship. I really admire how the German are re-reading their own history - in literature, films, and so on - understanding and narrating the suffering of people, yet not diminishing their responsibility.
Sadly enough, after watching the film, one may wonder if it is this Europe of bankers, corporations and bureaucrats in which the difference between the rich and the middle class is getting bigger, if it is this world of American arrogance leading to some equivalent forms of control, that dissidents in the former USSR-controlled countries were fighting for.