Don't believe the hype

Rating: 4/10 (27 March 2006)

This movie comes along with many headlines claiming that there is now finally a realistic portrait of the G.D.R. (i.e., the former socialistic eastern part of Germany). Actually, it tells us much more about the present situation in Germany, the lack of critical awareness and anticipatory obedience.
The plot is quickly told. The East German minister for culture (Thomas Thieme) gets randy at a popular actress (Martina Gedeck, playing one of these notorious "beautiful faces of communism"), and orders the Stasi (East German Secret Service) to observe, and eventually eliminate, her lover, a conformist playwright (Sebastian Koch). Chain of command goes down to the Stasi captain (Ulrich Muehe, star of the movie), who initially keeps his duty with his approved loyalty, but questions his activities in the course of time and during this distant confrontation with his victim. Finally, of course, he becomes a "good man".
Probably you don't need to know East Germany to see how ridiculous this is. To name a few points, for the Nomenklatura of the communist party, political power was more than a perfect substitute for sex, to an extend that they were closely controlling that only puritanic characters would enter the inner circles, or getting expelled otherwise (e.g. Konrad Naumann). As often mentioned, a minister for culture hadn't the power to command the Stasi for such tasks. Moreover, East Germany was anxiously to keep the opportunistic (and even the semi-opportunistic) intellectuals in good mood, actually making this land a kind of paradise for a certain type of artists. Of course, nobody who suffered from a tough Stasi watchdog would believe the wonderful change of mind pictured here.
The movie has some good points. First, the actors are very good, especially brilliant (as usual) Mr. Muehe. Secondly, it is not on of these light-hearted comedies painting the G.D.R. with nostalgic colours (though it inherits some of their cheap jokes, like the running gags about the East German furniture).
Unfortunately, this second point doesn't make the movie more realistic. The G.D.R. WAS a non-democratic state, with a huge load of injustice and cruelty, but it didn't work this way (though it is obvious that the director got some advice for the technical details of surveillance, but that's not the point). Actually, the director (who has no experience with the GDR society, which was claimed to be a merit by the German media) perfectly reflects how an average West-German artist (due to his natural limitations in experience) imagines the past of the East. No wonder this movie is a success. First of all, the conflict in the G.D.R. was about the society, not about sex. This is of course hard to imagine for modern pop-artists, whose only contact with reality is sex, and therefore the only propelling force. Secondly, a realistic movie about the G.D.R. should NOT play in East Berlin. It was the city of the mandarins of the socialistic society, life was fair and easy compared with the rest of the land. There were good reasons why the revolution in 1989 didn't start there. Thirdly, one should not take over the stories of some pseudo-dissidents who invented fashionable curricula to get a good start in the other part of Germany. These stories were simply manufactured to flatter the new rulers and get easy money. Unfortunately, this movie does perfectly the same (for business details, it would also be instructive to analyze how helpful an aristocratic title in the neo-feudalistic German society is to get the money for the production and friendly media).
What is also painfully lacking, is a feeling for today's morals of the story. Indeed, a similar surveillance could happen nowadays in the course of "anti-terrorism" in many countries (again, the movie has nothing to do specifically with the G.D.R.). There is obviously some fear of the author's to show that many of the G.D.R. institutional criminals are now very successful in the "new" Germany. Do you want a really specific German Stasi story? Imagine a close friend of a high rank Stasi officer, who founded a "democratic" party in 1989 to infiltrate the movement and/or get along with the new times, and follow her way through many surprising turns and strange political miracles till she finally ends as the head of the "new" Germany.