Not really convincing!

Rating: 7/10 (15 October 2008)

Top 250: #53?! 8.5 points?! What?!
Are are you kidding me?! This is absolutely ridiculous! That movie never deserves such a high ranking! How many really, really good films didn't even arrive on the Top 250?! But this overrated work did it?!
Do you really think this movie is better than 'Ben Hur'(#138)?!
Do you really think this movie is better than 'Blade Runner'(#104)?!
Do you really think this movie is better than '2001: A Space Odyssey'(#80)?!
Yes?!? O.k., your problem!
'Das Leben der Anderen' is solid, but not great!
And i'm telling you why:
This movie tries to tell the change of a fanatic, heavy-handed Stasi agent into a refined, freethinking good man. So far, so good.
The movie is at least 2 hours and 17 minutes long. But it doesn't take nowhere near enough time to focus on his most necessary point, the psychology transfer of the agent! Instead of it concentrates in his solid, but not very groundbreaking, background story about wiretapping, trust, betrayal, the Stasi and the inhuman system.
And do you know why? Because it was too difficult for the director! He runaround it. His own issue. He just uses some cheap tricks. He shows us, how the Stasi agent steals a book, written by the famous Heinrich Böll, whose works were forbidden in the DDR, from the author. And after that there is one shot where he reads a poetic part from it. While he's wiretapping him, he listens how beautiful his subject can play piano. Pling, Pling and suddenly he has become a different, better person who helps him. That's it. And that's too easy and too fast. And finally rather cheap.
The viewer doesn't get involved in a man's internal duel. We don't really understand, why he turns off from his principals. Of course we understand ourselves, that we (or most of us) don't want to live in a communistic system, but we can't empathize with this man about his change.
Mr. Von Donnersmarck doesn't make us feel he says us to feel.
But without making the experience of feeling, which could be told with the help of tools of a sensitive direction, this is not big cinema.
In his most important point this movie is weak, skin deep and unconvincing!!
That's my true opinion about it.
P.S.: I think one of the main reasons for the huge success of the film is, that there's been no film before, which concerned with the explosive Stasi theme. Although i think it got over-hyped and pushed by many IMDb-users from Germany.