Surveyed to death

Rating: 10/10 (3 March 2007)

There were many reasons for me to see this movie.
Some of my relatives lived in East Germany and could not get out. I never visited them before the wall fell, but as it was my mother's sister, Mom went to visit her sister on a regular basis over the years. She came back telling strange tales, that her sister and her husband were afraid to talk politics in their own house and always signaled to my mother to shut up. Nobody trusted anybody and parents were even afraid of their children, because the children were so indoctrinated by the regime. The older East-German generation suffered under and hated the all-present surveillance , but the younger ones were believers in the system.
The reunification of the two Germanys brought a lot of problems and many of the former East Germans missed parts of their old way of life because it took care of them.
Some good movies have been made to illustrate what life was like under the communist rule. One of my favorite is "Goodbye Lenin", which is hilariously funny and deeply sad at the same time.
I saw "The lives of others" at the first matinée when it opened in my town. The theater was half full , which was unusual for a foreign language film at such an early hour. Usually five people would be a high number.
All through the movie fear kept creeping up in me. Are we not there too? Are we not being surveyed everywhere and at all times? Wherever we go ,there are surveillance cameras. In the streets, in the shops, at work, at banks, in parking lots, even at home. They keep records of every move we do. They can trace practically all our financial expenditures, they know what we eat, where we shop, what we buy, how often we return or exchange items. They issue us all these plastic cards, which record everything we do. They know our medical history, our relationships, our criminal records and every move we make on the Internet, or who we contact on the phone. And that is without anybody taking a specific interest in us. Well, the interest is mostly to get to us to spend money. We are only of interest as long as we are consumers. Because our system is based on consumerism and has to be preserved. Now another interest is terrorism and we are even more under scrutiny.
The East German surveillance was based on preservation of their control system. They needed to keep control, because otherwise people could find out, that the system was not so good and they might revolt or leave the country. Like in our system, only a few people really profited from the system, the others were paying the price. The movie makes the case for artists paying the price of not being able to make art anymore. Many did not want to live that way and ended their own lives. East Germany stopped counting the suicides, because there were too many. The movie's main theme is about that fact.
I see suicide broader. There are many forms of slow suicides. Drugs, alcohol, overeating, mind numbing . "I see dead people everywhere", but mine have still living bodies, but the soul is gone or was never developed. We should all ask ourselves the question: Are we fully alive? Or are we just vegetating? Has our system turned us in brave little consumers without any other purpose in life?
Are we still caring and compassionate people or are we so indoctrinated by our system of consumerism that we judge people only by credit rating, status and material accumulations?
I hope, the fact, that the movie received an Oscar, will bring a big audience in the theaters. East Germany is not so far from the U.S. today.