Heartlessness Can Be So Heartbreaking

Rating: 9/10 (19 February 2012)

East Germany. Secret Police. Spies. Surveillance. Not the things you would normally associate with love, requited or otherwise. Yet The Lives of Others features all of these things, and more, and does so softly, harshly, suggestively, and profoundly. It is a brilliant film that certainly deserved the Academy Award it won in 2007 for best Foreign Film.
Ulrich Muhe plays a humorless, loveless East German secret police operative, Hauptman Wiesler, directed to spy on a noted playwright, Georg Dreyman, played by Sebastian Koch. Dreyman seems to be unwavering in his loyalty to his country and its socialist system of government. Dreyman lives with his talented and revered actress girlfriend, Christa- Maria Sieland, brilliantly inhabited by Martina Gedeck. Ms. Sieland stars in Dreyman's most recent play. The drama is well received by all, including the members of the government hierarchy and bureaucracy. Nevertheless it is decided by the highest levels of the secret police, known as the Stasi, that it would be best if Wiesler overheard everything that is said, done, and most importantly, thought, inside Dreyman's home.
Because he has no personal life whatsoever, Wiesler is adept on spying on those that do. Because of his work lovers can't love, purists can be pure, and thoughts are never private. Wiesler exists so that his superiors can exist, indeed prevail. And, as a result, freedoms are lost and lives simply vanish.
Muhe's silent, subtle, evocative performance clarifies Wiesler's personal torment and conflict. It is an indelible performance that depicts the disciplined restraint required of a non-life dedicated to infringement and intrusion. But for me, it is Gedeck's haunting performance that crystallizes this film. Her demons are those of her country's; her conflicts are the conflicts of the society in which she lives She is vulnerable in the way a soul searches for its essence in a world that does not seem to have one.
All of the performances in this film are strong and convincing. Even minor characters have a significant in the film. There is the young boy who asks Muhe if he really is the bad man that the boy's father says he is. There is the lowly lieutenant whose untimely joke at the expense of the government momentarily causes him to believe that his career is suddenly over. If Koch's performance as Dreyman is the least memorable, it is because his role serves to provide the experiential expanse for the film's other characters to impress their elements. Every character is carefully crafted and expertly delivered.
Wiesler ultimately challenges the very authority he embodied, acts upon a love he never had, and gravitates towards freedoms he never possessed. Tragically, Sieland's personal legacy is the exact opposite; she surrenders to an authority she never accepted, flees a love she embraced, and casts aside the freedoms she craved.
I will indeed contemplate this outstanding film often. And when I do, I hope my inner most private thoughts stay private.