The Worst Years Of Our Lives

Rating: 10/10 (14 April 2007)

This film has just opened in London and I attended one of the first screenings. I wish I could add something to the whole host of superlatives made by previous posters. This is a truly awesome film, at the very least a mini masterpiece and possibly even a fully-fledged one. With the best will in the world people in the West can never really KNOW what it was like to live in a state of constant long-distance supervision but this film - made by a native of West Germany who, by definition, has never known it either - comes as close as any to making us privy to that sensation. All the credits are impeccable from Writing, Directing down to the smallest 'extra' and it is wonderful to see Martina Gedeck, so great as Bella Martha, and Sebastian Koch, equally good in Black Book, once more but excellent as both are they are outshone by Ulrich Muhe as the Stasi official charged with monitoring their lives. Weighing in at a little over two hours and with no sex or violence to speak of the film nevertheless rivets the attention by - if not in spite of - the very grayness which informs it with Muhe, himself a victim of Stasi surveillance, outstanding as he mutates from automaton to human being but totally from WITHIN (no dramatic histrionics here to symbolize his volte-face, just acting of the most subtle kind). A film incapable of being overpraised and one that should be seen by every discerning film-goer.