Praise

Rating: 10/10 (27 March 2007)

What an auspicious, overwhelmingly impressive directorial debut this film is. It's difficult to think of any American director, even our finest, who made a true milestone during their first time in the director's chair. The Lives of Others is seamless. The pace of the film is intense, steady, fixated, allowing smaller things, technical situations, difficult to imagine on film, to become riveting moments integrated into the film as a whole. The drama of the movie's story is sternly realized with an almost cold perspective that allows realism that is impartial, though the film's stance is very obvious and clear. The historical detail of the look and feel of East Berlin during the time of the Berlin Wall in the 1980s is very bleak and clearly portrayed as such by the impeccable camera. According to a friend who saw this movie with me, who was studying abroad at one point in East Berlin during the time it takes place, the realization of setting and time period is perfectly realistic.
Something about the film that I am personally drawn to is the involvement in the subject matter of intricate plots, intrigue, elaborate schemes, and overall sneakiness, all of which are present in very fulfilling form and perfectly organized within the plot, which still allows great emotion and cinematic voice.
Ulrich Muhe, an actor I've seen in a few of Michael Haneke's films, may seem to many American viewers to be overly stoic and hardly dramatic, but his portrayal of an externally cold, stand-offish introvert of very few words is brilliant. His performance is actually quite a dramatic challenge. The self-control required to play the role with the gradual intensity that he does is a joy to watch, as are the performances of varying degrees of animation, tone, and persona by the rest of the cast, mainly Gedeck, Koch, Tukur, and Thieme.
The Lives of Others is possibly the greatest German film I've seen so far in my life. It is wonderful, surely even for those who aren't familiar with the political matter of the story.