Das Laben der Andersen

Rating: Null/10 (10 March 2007)

Das Leben der Andersen When Das Leben der Andersen took part at the Rotterdam International Film Festival, I had read raving reviews of it. I remembered its promo advertisement, but I forgot its name. This week when I was trying to find out about this movie on the web, every web site critic had given high rating and rave reviews of the movie. And only after seeing the movie I knew that this movie has won the "Best Foreign Film Oscar award".
The story is set up in 1984 East Germany when the government monitored the lives of people through civilian informants. Ulrich Muhe plays Gerd - the civilian informant and Sebastian Koch (remember Zwartoek?) plays Georg - the journalist writer who is not considered loyal to East Germany. Georg is identified and every move of his is monitored meticulously. But the story's pivotal character is Ulrich who is trained like a machine / robot by Germans to perform a duty to minute every breath of Georg. The interesting part of the movie is the transformation within Ulrich into a human being. But the compelling part comes when the story brings Ulrich is called by duty to pin Georg. The last 40 minutes of the movie is very enjoyable and satisfying.
There is a bit of slack in the editing of some scenes where the flows of scenes are not in synchronization.
This is just the sixth movie of the young Director (he is just 34 years old) Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, and I think he is done a marvelous job.
I liked the movie, I would not say I loved it. It is a pattern within Oscar's foreign film awards that they tend to give awards to political or sad movies, as if that is the only criteria of selecting winners!? I doubt! That means that this year there was no good foreign language movie better than this? I doubt that too! (Stars 7.5 out of 10)