Stasi-officers do have morals

Rating: Null/10 (15 March 2007)

THE LIFE OF OTHERS (Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck - Germany 2006).
DAS LEBEN DER ANDEREN won practically every award it competed for and after it has won the Oscar for best foreign language film, I became a tad suspicious. Most films that won the Academy Award for best foreign language film are usually two-penny tragedies at best or grotesque monstrosities, but since this is the first feature by writer-director Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck (I couldn't have picked a better name for a Prussian junker), I gathered it must have been the script above anything else that made his effort worth seeing. Sadly, he proves himself more of a decent - if somewhat unimaginative - cinematographer than a writer. The film seems to have been targeted at international audiences with scant knowledge of German history. That's fine by me, if an engaging storyline can make up for the sometimes insultingly obvious remarks some of the characters make about East-West relations or daily life in East Germany. The first half hour is full of over-explanatory comments about day-to-day practices, mostly rehashing Western capitalist clichés and some truly awful jokes, delivered in such an abysmal way (the jokes themselves not being that awful), not even the world's greatest comedian could make it work. Injecting heavy-handed films with humor is never easy. If the film intends to give the audience an idea what day-to-day life was like in the GDR, he did a good job. An almost total absence of colour, excitement or hope.
Stasi officer Wiesler (Ulrich Mühe) is a caricature of German punctuality. When he attends a party in celebration of the latest play by writer Georg Dreyman (Sebastian Koch), he suggests to his superior officer - also at the party - Dreyman may be flirting with The West as well. Next, he wiretaps Dreyman's apartment and installs himself in an empty attic in the apartment building. Dreyman's supposedly subversive activities were a bit hazy to me and why officer Wiesler commits himself to this case, remains unclear. He doesn't have a life outside his work. I guess the next inevitably constitutes some spoilers.
*** SPOILERS AHEAD ***
Years after the Wende, Dreyman is told that his house was wired and his every move was monitored by the Stasi. To my astonishment, he seems completely surprised by this piece of information. How could this be? How could a well-known writer, or any intellectual for that matter, in East Germany, not even assume his every move is being watched? Even cleaning ladies assumed they could be monitored and spied upon. That was the whole essence of life in East Germany. The trauma of East German citizens perennially paranoid of one another. Initially, this seemed the outlook of the film itself, but the only conclusion I could draw was that a) I missed out on some essential piece of information or b)Dreyman's character didn't know. In that case, it would make him pretty dim-witted.
*** SPOILERS END ***
The period and feeling of the GDR is well-captured and I must admit, the final denouement of Wiesler walking the streets of Berlin, alone and bereft of any goal in life after the demise of East Germany, was kind of moving, but as a whole, very disappointing.
Camera Obscura --- 4/10