Bad Idea, Good Execution

Rating: 4/10 (7 July 2008)

Why and how did this film win the Oscar for best foreign language film 2006???? Clearly "Pan's Labrynth" should have won. I was eager to see "The Live of Others" after it had won the Oscar, and now that I have seen it my my question is why did it win? Politics? The Lola prize? Preferences for German films? Color theory? Actor preferences? Discovery Channel fans? This film had a major inauthentic hole. It is completely PRETENTIOUS to believe that a police investigator changed his attitude towards his work and towards his victims because of his exposure to art, specifically to his exposure to music from Beethoven. Was this a comedy? This film had almost everything else going for it, but the premise was so bogus that it made the rest of the film unforgivable. The acting was good. The scenery gray and tyrannical. The reality of East Berlin was authentic, but once again the premise was NOT authentic. No one, no one changes because they heard a score from Beethoven and or saw a play. They may be affected by that for a little while, but they go back to being themselves thereafter, especially a cold-blooded, career-oriented police investigator from the Stasi. Maybe if he had taken piano lessons for five years he would had changed and had seen his humanity, and the humanity of others, but not because he heard his victims playing a piano piece. BS!!! Rescind the Oscar and give it to Pan's Labrynth !