Remarkable period piece

Rating: 10/10 (14 April 2007)

As someone who grew up in the East German era depicted in this film I have of course two advantages - the language and the personal experience. The Lives of Others deals with a topic that had infiltrated East German lives to a still unknown degree and it is to the credit of the film makers that they have tackled this in a remarkable way. The story centres around a Stasi officer who is put on the trail of a writer and his intellectual friends. With time he becomes gradually absorbed with their lives eventually turning from interrogator to protector. The script is tight, the atmosphere both bleak and electric, the acting superb and the sets full of accurate details that give this film an air of real authenticity. That there is dramatic over-expression of certain aspects of Stasi working is inevitable but does make the film a little unbelievable at times. It is worth remembering that the director is West German and presumably had no personal experience of living in East Germany hence the film sometimes feels like expressing how West Germans imagined life in East Germany. However, this is perhaps not a bad thing as it makes the film more accessible to Western audiences and I have no doubts that the Oscar was well deserved. It is worth watching for the insights into both East German state and intellectual thinking of the 1980s and the story itself is gripping enough for two hours of good cinema.