1984, East Germany - Shield and Sword of the Party know everything

Rating: 10/10 (24 September 2007)

"The Lives of Others", the 2007 very deserving Oscar winner for the Best Foreign Film is IMO, the best film of last year regardless of the country it was made in. It took its writer/director several years first to thoroughly research still very painful events of the recent German history, the ones that deal with infamous and evil STASI (State Secret Police) and how it infiltrated and affected almost every aspect of GDR life. Before the collapse of the Soviet system and its most ominous and infamous symbol, the wall in the end of the 80s, life in East Germany of 1984 had imitated art precisely like in the prophetic and terrifying George Orwell's novel. Each citizen could have and majority were closely monitored by STASI which motto was "Shield and Sword of the Party" and its goal, "To know everything". By the time East Germany collapsed in 1989, STASI employed an estimated 91,000 employees and 300,000 informants; about one in fifty East Germans collaborated with the powerful and Omni-present Secret Police, one of the most extensive infiltrations of a police apparatus in history. The STASI monitored political behavior among GDR citizens, and is known to have used torture and intimidation to mute, corrupt, and destroy dissent. Even those who believed they were above suspicion due to their closeness to the prominent members of the government were not safe. The film explores the lives of those who watched and listened and those on the other side of the wire.
I was shocked to find out that such astounding movie was a directorial debut of 33 years old Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck - so artistically impeccable this honest, human, horrifying, harrowing yet hopeful film is. The film makers had recreated successfully and precisely the 1980s with its dark suffocating atmosphere of constant abuse of individual privacy in the former German Democratic republic. The locations, the huge dominating gray apartment buildings of the big city where every wall seems to have the ears and the eyes , the old cars on the streets of East Berlin  everything looks, sounds, and feels authentically . As great as "The Lives of Others is", it would not have been the same without Ulrich Mühe, as Captain Gerd Wiesler, a highly skilled and efficient STASI officer and a loyal member of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany, who spies on successful playwright and his actress girlfriend by the order of corrupted hypocritical member of the government. While listening to the Lives of Others, Wiesler's own life would change in the way he had never expected.
Once you start watching the movie, you'll see how Ulrich Mühe effortlessly over towers every other performance on the screen, and they are all excellent. The real life of Ulrich Mühe could make a great and compelling movie and the script for "The Lives of Others" was written with him in mind. He was born, grew up, and became a famous actor in the Eastern Germany back in the late 70s of the last century. By the words of von Donnersmarck, STASI began spying on Mühe right after he had graduated from High School because STASI realized that he would be great even before he himself realized that. After German reunification, Mühe discovered evidence in his STASI file that he had been under surveillance not only by four of his fellow actors in the East Berlin theater, but also by his second wife, Jenny Gröllmann. This was denied by Gröllmann who, after an acrimonious and highly-publicized court case, succeeded in obtaining an injunction to prevent Mühe from repeating the allegation in a book. Mühe's response when asked how he prepared for his role in Das Leben der Anderen was simple, "I remembered". Mühe passed away few months ago, in July 2007 due to stomach cancer at the age or 54, and when I read it, I felt emptiness - like a very good close friend has gone forever. His performance in the film "The Lives of Others" will live always as one of the best and most memorable given by any actor of the screen.