Das Leben der Anderen

Plot synopsis:
The Lives of Others is at once a political thriller and a human drama. The film opens in East Berlin in 1984 with a sequence that alternates scenes from an interrogation with scenes from a training class for aspiring officers of the Stasi, or secret police. Stasi Captain Gerd Wiesler (Ulrich Mühe), code name HGW XX/7, is demonstrating his interrogation technique using audio of his own interrogation of a suspect. Wiesler instructs the students on how to tell whether a subject is lying. A student asks a question that Wiesler judges to be a bit too compassionate (read "bourgeois"), and the professor marks the student's name on the attendance record: surely this student has just flunked the course, or worse. During the feature's first thirty minutes, writer/director Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck draws a portrait of Wiesler that borders on caricature: Wiesler is a highly skilled officer of the Stasi, a proud, zealous, disciplined and entirely cold-blooded professional. He is one of the many cogs in the wheel of "the System," working anonymously and tirelessly, convinced that his efforts are building a better Socialist society.At the end of the class, Lieutenant-Colonel Anton Grubitz (Ulrich Tukur), Wiesler's old school friend (and probably his only friend), who has risen to the position of head of the Culture Department at Stasi, comes to invite Wiesler to a theatrical premiere. The play is by the celebrated East German playwright Georg Dreyman (Sebastian Koch), and its leading character is played by Dreyman's lover, Christa-Maria Sieland (Martina Gedeck), an actress of great reputation. Dreyman, who writes plays about the heroic proletariat, lives a rather comfortable life in a plush East Berlin apartment, enjoying a certain notoriety among DDR officials who value him because he's one of the few East German writers whose work is read in the west. He preserves the respect of the artistic community by using his (relatively) secure position for occasional interventions in favor of dissident fellow artists. Wiesler at once suspects that Dreyman's loyalty to the party is not as strong as it would seem on the surface, even if the high party officials are convinced.Following the performance Grubitz has a brief conversation regarding Dreyman with Culture Minister Bruno Hempf (Thomas Thieme), who also attended. Hempf is attracted to the leading lady. However, since Dreyman is in the way, he must somehow be eliminated. Hempf, who happens also to be a member of the ZK ("Zentralkomitee") which has authority over the Stasi, tells Grubitz about his reservations regarding the playwright's loyalty to the SED ("Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands," or Socialist Unity Party), suggesting full-scale surveillance of Dreyman. Grubitz, always eager to better his own political future, asks his friend Wiesler to manage this procedure (the highest level of monitoring of suspected individuals), code-named "Lazlo." (Laszlo is a Hungarian name -- perhaps a reference to the high suicide rates in Hungary, which we'll touch on later.) Soon after, Hempf meets Dreyman and Sieland at a party, and in a rather unsubtle way lets Christa-Maria know of his feelings toward her. He also tweaks Dreyman about the naiveté of the belief displayed in his plays that people change; Hempf is convinced that people never change.Wiesler stalks Dreyman, noting his comings and goings, and while the playwright is away he has Dreyman's apartment systematically bugged. As the bugging team leaves the apartment, Wiesler notices that a neighbor is watching them through the peephole in her door. He knocks and tells the neighbor that if she tells anyone what she saw, her daughter will lose her place at university. Wiesler sets up his surveillance headquarters in the attic, just above the apartment.As Dreyman and Sieland prepare for a party in the flat in honor of Dreyman's fortieth birthday, Sieland presents him with a necktie and reminds him that he promised to wear it. She wonders if he knows how to tie it, and he replies that he's from the middle class and grew up wearing ties; he's since had to transcend his background (presumably to succeed in a socialist state). When he goes into the hall to put on the tie, though, it becomes clear that he was not telling the truth, and he makes a mess of it. He nips across the landing to knock on his neighbor's door and ask her to tie it for him. She comes into his apartment and ties the tie competently, but she's so nervous (about the surveillance) that Dreyman asks whether she's sick -- but of course she can't tell him what's the matter. The neighbor goes home with Christa-Maria none the wiser; she's mildly impressed at Dreyman's unexpected skill with a necktie.At the party Dreyman's close friend, theater director Albert Jerska (Volkmar Kleinert), is shunned by the other guests. Because Jerska has been blacklisted for his anti-government opinions he hasn't been able to work for years; now people are afraid to be seen talking to him. Jerska's birthday gift to Dreyman is sheet music for a work called Sonata for a Good Man.In a lunchtime scene at Stasi headquarters, a young agent starts to tell a joke about SED leader Erich Honecker. He's overheard and forced to finish it by Grubitz, who then threatens to have him transferred to the most low-level, soul-crushingly boring job available, and finally claims he was kidding.Soon Wiesler's observations indicate that, contrary to his prejudices toward artists as free-thinkers, Dreyman's attitude toward the DDR and its SED is not particularly scornful. In the meantime, Christa-Maria has been "convinced" by Minister Hempf to be receptive to his advances, and when Wiesler finds out about this development, it dawns on him that maybe Operation Lazlo has more to do with the libido of the Minister than with the DDR's security. From his surveillance post, Wiesler makes Dreyman's doorbell ring to draw Dreyman down to the street door in time to see the minister drop Sieland off and tell her when she must meet him again.Dreyman is provoked to take action by the awareness of his lover's coerced sexual relationship with the minister and the suicide of his blacklisted friend Jerska. After learning of Jerska's death, Dreyman sits at his piano and plays the piece Jerska gave him, the Sonata for a Good Man. Wiesler, listening in the attic, is moved to tears by the music. Christa-Maria comes in and Dreyman quotes Lenin saying if he'd kept listening to Beethoven's Appassionata he'd never have finished the revolution. Then he asks, "Can anyone who has heard this music, I mean truly heard it, really be a bad person?"In the following scene, a small child in an elevator asks Wiesler if he's really with the Stasi, and confides that his father says Stasi agents are bad men who put people in prison. Wiesler starts to ask the boy his father's name, but stops himself.The film showcases Wiesler's empty life -- he apparently has no family -- in an episode with a prostitute. After sex he asks her to stay a little while, but she has another appointment. Saying that he needs to reserve any time he wants in advance, she leaves him alone.Dreyman resolves to help reveal the true face of the DDR government to the outside world. With the help of well-positioned West Germans who provide him with a typewriter that can't be traced back to him, he plans to publish an anonymous exposé in one of the leading West German weeklies, Der Spiegel. The article concerns the DDR government's cover-up of the high suicide rate in East Germany; the government stopped collecting suicide statistics in 1977, at which time East Germany's suicide rate was higher than that of every other country in Europe except for Hungary.As they work on the article, Dreyman's friends worry about being overheard. Dreyman is sure his apartment isn't bugged, but his friends suspect otherwise. They devise a test: a contact in West Germany comes to visit Dreyman's flat and they discuss his plans to return to West Germany with his son, an East German citizen, hidden under the seat of his car. They describe the car, a gold Mercedes, and the intended route, then announce their departure. Wiesler hears everything but decides not to tip off the border guards. When the car makes it across the border, Dreyman and his friends conclude that his apartment is safe and unbugged.Wiesler has heard enough by now to know that Dreyman is writing something that will be smuggled out for publication in West Germany; he's in a position to provide a victory to the DDR and a feather in his own professional cap by foiling Dreyman's plot. However, Wiesler is starting to waver in his determination to bring Operation Lazlo to its conclusion. In the process of snooping in his victims' everyday lives, including their love lives, he has unconsciously been drawn into their world, which in turn has put his own in question. At one point, he approaches a despondent Christa-Maria in a café to tell her how much he admires her work. She replies that he's a good man. He does not tell her his name. When Wiesler returns to the surveillance post, he learns that Christa-Maria went home to Dreyman, skipping her appointment with the minister, and that she won't see the minister again.When Dreyman's article is finally published in the West, it is a public disaster for the DDR, and the playwright becomes a prime suspect. Grubitz is incredulous that with all his expertise, Wiesler could have missed the indications that Dreyman was writing the article. (Wiesler, like Dreyman, has relied on Dreyman's cover story that he's writing a play in honor of the DDR's 40th anniversary.) Minister Hempf uses Christa-Maria's drug addiction as an excuse to have her arrested and threatens to terminate her acting career unless she collaborates with the authorities and denounces her lover as the author of the embarrassing article, which she does. The Stasi searches Dreyman's apartment, but comes up empty-handed.Now Wiesler, who had withheld evidence concerning the source of the article, must decide where his allegiances lie: with the DDR and his brilliant career as a top Stasi officer, or with Dreyman and Christa-Maria, whose honest lives he has come to appreciate. In a tense scene, he sits in an interrogation room as Christa-Maria is brought in, knowing that she will recognize him from their encounter at the café and that Grubitz is watching through the one-way glass. But Sieland is too good an actress to give anything away. Wiesler offers her a choice: never work in the theater again, or become an informant and tell him where Dreyman has hidden the typewriter he used to write the suicide article. He tells her that they already have enough evidence to put Dreyman in jail, so there's nothing she can do for him, but she can save herself and hide her involvement with the Stasi. She agrees, miserably.Wiesler rushes to reach Dreyman's apartment before the rest of the Stasi search team. He extracts the typewriter from its hiding-place and spirits it away. A newly released Christa-Maria comes home and feeds Dreyman a line about being away in the country; she's in the shower when the Stasi team arrives and she emerges in her bathrobe in time to see Grubitz start to pry up the floorboard that still, she believes, conceals the typewriter. She makes bleak eye contact with Dreyman, who knows she must have told them where to look. She leaves the house before Grubitz can get the board up to reveal -- nothing. When she reaches the street, Christa-Maria steps deliberately into the path of a truck and is hit. Wiesler speaks to her briefly as she lies bleeding in the road, but retreats as Dreyman embraces her and apologizes; he believes she removed the typewriter. She dies. Grubitz, who seems slightly abashed by this development, calls off the investigation. However, he tells Wiesler that although Wiesler was clever enough to leave no tracks, Grubitz knows he covered for Dreyman. Grubitz assures Wiesler that he will spend the remaining 20 years of his career steaming open the correspondence of his fellow citizens in a dank Stasi basement.About five years later Wiesler is, indeed, steaming letters open in a basement office; a colleague behind him is listening to the radio. (It's the same young officer who got in trouble for telling a joke about SED leader Erich Honecker -- demoted despite Grubnitz's assurance that he was kidding about punishing him.) The young officer hears on the radio that the Berlin Wall has fallen and shares his earpiece so Wiesler can listen too. When Wiesler gets up and walks out of the Stasi office, the other workers follow him.Two years later, Dreyman runs into ex-Minister Hempf (who has survived the political upheaval very well, thank you), and asks him why his (Dreyman's) apartment was never bugged. Hempf (before throwing in a spurious insult about Dreyman's inability to sexually satisfy Christa-Maria) assures Dreyman that his home was thoroughly bugged, tells him about Operation Lazlo, and advises him to look behind his light switches. Dreyman does so, and then visits the Stasi archives, which have been made public. In the lengthy records of Operation Lazlo, he discovers gaps covering evidence that would have been damning, along with beneficial misinformation, all attributed to a Stasi agent identified as HGW XX/7. He also learns that Christa-Maria was released from custody too late to have extracted the typewriter from its hiding place, and he notices a red fingerprint on one of the pages -- left there by an agent who must have handled the mysteriously missing typewriter with its distinctive red ribbon. The file's final entry notes the transfer and demotion of HGW XX/7, who is blamed for the failure of the operation. Dreyman looks up HGW XX/7's real name and tracks down Wiesler (who now delivers mail for a living), but doesn't speak to him.Two year later still, Wiesler walks past a bookstore advertising a new release with huge posters of the author's face. The book, billed as a novel, is called Sonata for a Good Man, and the author is Georg Dreyman. Wiesler goes inside, opens a copy, and reads the dedication: to HGW XX/7, in gratitude. At the checkout counter the clerk asks whether he should giftwrap the book, and Wiesler replies, "no, it's for me."

Tags: psychological, suspenseful, murder, mystery, dramatic, intrigue, flashback, humor, romantic, historical

Review:
Many of these snitches were blackmailed or other pressures exerted (threats to children and loved ones) and a few obliged voluntarily.What is truly amazing is that this is Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck's directorial debut, and he maintains a masterful hand throughout and keeps the story and the tension rolling from the first scene of interrogation which is filmed back and forth between a tape educating new Stasi as to interview techniques and to the actual cell itself where it was recorded.The movie circles around three main characters and there is a wider circle of the powerful who pull the puppet strings for a variety of reasons which become clear as the movie unfolds.First is Georg Dreyman, a playwright on the verge of celebrating his 40th birthday.
I've been taking German lessons for about 2 months now, and since movies were great in helping me learn English language I'm always looking for German films to watch (as well as German music to listen to) in order to educate my ears.Anyway, I went to this place where I get all sort of rare movies and this one caught my attention...
This is the kind of movie that gets your attention from the first moment, and makes you interested in understanding the characters' psyche, which is very varied: you have the idealistic good guys, the idealistic bad guys, the people that broad their minds understanding that no political dogma is better than individual freedom, etc.
And even though the movie has very tough moments it is all so well done and presented with such a good taste that in the end you feel some sort of relieved.In this present day, when the ghost of authoritarian regimes still fly over our heads (in my country we're getting closer and closer to that reality), this movie will make you think about how important love, life and freedom are.A must see!.
I saw this film in its North American premiere in a packed theater at the Toronto Int'l Film Festival this past week and was pleased to be part of a standing ovation at the end for the director and star, who were both on hand."The Lives of Others," set in East Germany not long before the fall of the Berlin Wall, tells the moving story of a police investigator forced to confront himself and the work he does.
In a society poisoned by secrecy, fear and the abuse of power, a number of the movie's characters -- artists, actors, writers -- must look deep inside and decide what they are made of; none more so than the investigator.This is a movie that took me to a place and time that felt very authentic, for a tale that was very satisfying.Ulrich Muhe, who plays the investigator, is mesmerizing, and the young director is to be applauded for this, his first full-length film.
But he is far from the only good actor in this movie, Ulrich Mühe as the State Security (Stasi) agent whose task it is to monitor Koch's suspiciously free thinking playwright, brings another near perfect performance to the movie.
There is an undeniable link between the two characters even though they never share a single scene and Georg Dreyman (Koch) doesn't even find about Wiesler until the last 10 minutes of the movie, which leads us up to what should go down as one of the greatest endings in cinema history.
having had the joy - while not living in the old gdr itself - to have some "accidental" run ins with the good old stasi then, i found it awkward that a German director from the "west" would have the guts to take on the subject of this "ministry of greyness".writer/director florian henkell von donnersmarck (nice name for a teutonic director, me thinks, very fancy - makes you bang your heels) not only survived this bout of pretension which could have let him drowned in a swamp of reproaches and allegations about executing the "justice of the winners", but he transformed the tale into a story that can and will be understood anywhere in the world: a tale about power, treason and the almost anarchistic potency of emotions.while at the same time not falling into the trap of moralizing with a waving finger but showing us "the system" as an bureaucratic nightmare powered by - eventually - once even good intentioned human robots of socialist self-righteousness who actually destroy all real positive socialist impulses in the ones they plague, this film is - even if one disagrees with it's premises - probably the most important political drama coming out of Germany for years..
"Who knows the secrets of the human heart?" Col in The Crying Game WhenI saw 2006's Oscar winning Departed, I was satisfied it could be the best picture of the year; then I saw Pan's Labyrinth and thought it imaginatively superior; then I saw Lives of Others, the Oscar choice for best foreign film, and I knew it was the globe's best film of the year, no argument.Lives of Others is what all movie making should strive to be: interesting characters, thrilling plot, superb acting, and thematic weight.
Gerd Wiesler (Ulrich Muehe), a Stasi teacher and coldly efficient information gatherer, surreptitiously watches playwright Georg Dreyman (Sebastian Koch) and his actress girlfriend Christa-Maria Sieland (Martina Gedeck) to get compromising details that would damn Dreyman and open the romantic way for the culture minister, Bruno Hempf (Thomas Thieme).
First-time director Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck misses not a beat in slowly revealing the hearts of all his principals while he creates a plot remarkably interesting for a character-driven piece.Few films could mine the rich conflict between the totalitarian state and artists who yearn for freedom of expression, between the loyalties of friends and lovers and the crushing exigency of survival.
The Captain is so talented in interrogation that he gives lectures on interrogation techniques to Stasi cadets.For complex reasons, Wiesler is investigating a prominent couple-- Christa-Maria Sieland, a beautiful and talented actor (Martina Gedeck), and Georg Dreyman (Sebastian Koch) an accomplished author and playwright.Artists in East Germany were strictly controlled by the state.
Writer/director Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck in his feature film debut gives the screen this wonderfully compelling story of life behind the Iron Curtain in the years leading to the 1989 fall of the Berlin Wall and continues into 1991 after the reunification of Germany.
As one who live in such a country, I think this movie is a masterpiece and Ulrich Muhe made a brilliant role, and maybe he's the man who should win the Oscar this year.
The characters were brilliantly wholesome and the story was lacking in nothing.The film is set in the 1980's in Germany and details the lives of those living under the regime in East Germany, focusing on some of the more "controversial" types in society; namely artists, play writes and actors.
For me, this movie was really good, so I am a follower of the positive reviews I have read.What I would like to do, is comment on the negative reviews I have read about the character development, and in particular the role of Ulrich Muhe (Hauptmann Gerd Wiesler).A lot of people state that the transition from a very strict Stasi agent to the helpful 'friend' isn't realistic and human.
It took its writer/director several years first to thoroughly research still very painful events of the recent German history, the ones that deal with infamous and evil STASI (State Secret Police) and how it infiltrated and affected almost every aspect of GDR life.
The film explores the lives of those who watched and listened and those on the other side of the wire.I was shocked to find out that such astounding movie was a directorial debut of 33 years old Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck - so artistically impeccable this honest, human, horrifying, harrowing yet hopeful film is.
As great as "The Lives of Others is", it would not have been the same without Ulrich Mühe, as Captain Gerd Wiesler, a highly skilled and efficient STASI officer and a loyal member of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany, who spies on successful playwright and his actress girlfriend by the order of corrupted hypocritical member of the government.
While listening to the Lives of Others, Wiesler's own life would change in the way he had never expected.Once you start watching the movie, you'll see how Ulrich Mühe effortlessly over towers every other performance on the screen, and they are all excellent.
I am talking about real life, the real events that took place in East Germany before the Fall of the Wall.While I was watching 'The lives of others'I couldn't help comparing it to another film, 'Good Bye, Lenin'; both are widely applauded approaches to the recent history of East Germany.
But I think one of them is definitely superior to the other; read on if you'd like to know which.Both films are German and were released more or less at the same time -around 2005- and they share factual accuracy and the atmosphere of that historical period, although the first one takes place mainly in the years before the Fall of the Wall and the second, in the years immediately after.
In addition, both films were recorded on set and on location -we can enjoy watching what Karl Marx Allee looked like almost thirty years ago.However, although both films portray our recent history very convincingly, I strongly recommend 'Good bye, Lenin!'because it is funny, moving and grabs your attention from the very first moment.
While the credits begin to roll, and as Captain Wiesler's (Ulrich Müle) face - transformed by muted joy - fades to black, I pondered, for a long time, the sheer brilliance of this finely crafted narrative from an equally brilliant first-time writer/producer/director, Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck.This film is positive proof that, for the most part, it is the story that makes or breaks.
That's not to say this film is without flaw; but, I'll come to that below.Fade in starts in 1984 - a nicely ironic touch, I thought, given that the setting is the police state of the GDR  East Germany before the Berlin Wall came down.
Set in East Berlin in the mid-80s, some five years before the infamous Wall crumbled, it follows the STASI as they plot to find incriminating evidence against playwright Georg Dreyman, who'd been the regime's darling until a ruthless minister frivolously develops a lecherous desire to possess his girlfriend, renowned stage actress Christa-Maria Sieland.
When a movie is trying to teach me something, is taking itself so seriously and present something as if it's history, I can't.The main character is introduced to us as a long career STASI agent, an expert in interrogation techniques, as cold and inhuman as required, a guy who lives alone, who (apparently) has no family, no love, only the too short company of a very busy prostitute.The guy is good with torture which probably means he's a sadist and/or fanatical and dedicated to the nation and who can go past the pain he inflicts to people.Somehow, the story will be about how this man will suddenly grow some empathy, sensitiveness and an ability of betraying what he's been living for all these years because while spying on some "others" for a very short period of time, he will be living their lives and discover his own humanity.This movie is political correctness at its worst.
In my opinion it one of the very few German movies that meets the international standards in this area of entertainment: It tells a very intelligent and interesting story, keeps the audience entertained and excited from start to end and leaves the viewer affected and thrilled.I would not be surprised at all if this film became a great international success..
But this...it blew me away at how good it was.The acting by all the cast was great, Martina Gedeck, Sebastian Koch...just brilliant, but Ulrich Mühe, top performance as the Stasi officer.
And the cold Stasi agent will share empathy for his future victims.The way the inhuman agent (greatly plays by Ulrich Mühe) slowly becomes an anonymous hero ( he'll stay a serial number to the end, hidden in the shadows of more brightly people) to the contact of passion, love and art (music, theater and literature), symbolized by the couple he's suppose to watch, is very convincing and greatly develops.
Don't miss it, as you will be missing rare acting greatness if you do, and at least the equal to the brilliance of Massimo Triosi in Il Postino.Also, along with the greatest movie-ending lines in history, the very last line in this film summed up everything that happened before in the best and fewest words possible, and it will surely move you greatly, not only from immense sadness and pity for what happened to the disgraced former cop but also from great hope and gratitude for the people in this world who finally see the true light as did Muhe's transformed police captain, and then put it to work bettering the world even though the personal cost may be great.
An heroic act of course, but even more, one worthy of emulation by all of us."The Lives of Others" was so emotionally powerful throughout but nearly overwhelming at the end, as it showed so well one of the greatest life-lessons that can be learned by anyone, and one never to be forgotten....some of your good deeds will be rewarded in some way.(added 1/23/08: one of the best movies and lead role acting in decades.
It has been suggested that the story of Hauptmann Wiesler (Ulrich Muhe), a senior, dedicated and zealous Stasi East German (DDR) secret police officer who starts to empathise with the subjects of his investigation is rather improbable, but to me it rings true emotionally.His subjects are Georg Dreyman (Sebastian Koch), a playwright currently in party favour, and his actress lover Christa-Maria (Martina Gedeck).
It tells the story about an officer of the secret East German police who in November 1984 is assigned by a general secretary named Anton Gribitz to surveil a writer named Georg Dreyman who lives in an apartment block with a theater actress named Christa-Marie Sieland.Distinctly and precisely directed by German filmmaker Florian Henckel Von Donnersmarck, this finely tuned fictional tale which is narrated from multiple viewpoints, draws a consistently involving and nuanced portrayal of an author who is looking for ways to reach readers in West Germany, his popular actress girlfriend and a man who spends most of his time following his life.
While notable for it's distinct and mostly interior milieu depictions, sterling production design by production designer Silke Buhr, cinematography by German cinematographer Hagen Bogdanski and brilliant editing by film editor Patricia Rommel, this dialog-driven and narrative-driven neo-noir and dense chamber-piece depicts three engaging and empathic studies of character and contains a great score by composers Gabriel Yared and Stéphane Moucha.This political, romantic and modestly sensual thriller about surveillance and the ongoing conflicts between supporters and opponents of the dictatorship in DDR during the Cold War which is set in East Berlin and Berlin during the mid and late 1980s and the early 1990s, is impelled and reinforced by it's cogent narrative structure, substantial character development and the poignant acting performances by German actors Ulrich Mühe (1953-2007), Sebastian Koch, Ulrich Tukur and German actress Martina Gedeck.
With a run-time of over 2 hours, the film doesn't let you take your eyes off even for a single momentOther than Donnersmarck's brilliant direction, the movie's fascinating and morally complex characters, acted out flawlessly by the three leads, keep you involved right from the beginning.
It can also be viewed as an allegory for the art of film making (or stage directing and writing) and the craft of acting, as we see the fractured psyche of the Stasi police officer--much like the blacklisted director character who commits suicide-- who so desperately wants to intervene and direct the troubling lives of those he surveys (the writer and actress--both wrestling with their own internal demons as their lives soon become not their own).
Sonata for a Good Man. In 1984, in East Germany, the popular actress addicted in pills Christa-Maria Sieland (Martina Gedeck) becomes the pivot of an investigation of the successful writer and her boyfriend and mate Georg Dreyman (Sebastian Koch) by the secret police.
However, Wiesler becomes fascinated with the lives and thoughts of George and Christa and covers his findings from his superiors."Das Leben der Anderen" is another powerful German movie, showing the repressing and corrupted system supported by fear in East Germany in times of Cold War. This movie is practically perfect: the screenplay and story are engaging, disclosing a triangle of love that causes a political surveillance of an innocent man based on several characters that are perfectly developed.
The set-up is simple but highly resonant: in 1984 East Berlin, by-the-book Stasi agent Wiesler (Ulrich Mühe) is assigned to wiretap and listen in on playwright Georg Dreyman (Sebastian Koch) and his actress girlfriend, Christa-Maria Sieland (Martina Gedeck).
Not many recent movies ask the question "What does it really mean to be a good person?" and even fewer answer it with the honesty and depth that this film does."The Lives of Others" does not over-explain itself--none of the characters can confide in anyone, so they make their difficult choices without talking about why they've acted that way.
Perfect ending.Great performances all round, especially from the three main actors - Martina Gedeck, Ulrich Muhe and Sebastian Koch.Well deserved its Best Foreign Language Film Oscar in 2007, and should have been nominated for more than just that..
Before the Berlin Wall came down, the government was very interested in "The Lives of Others," a brilliant 2006 German film directed and written by Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck.The story concerns a dramatist, Georg Dreyman (Sebastian Koch), and his actress-girlfriend, Christa-Maria Sieland (Martina Gedeck).
It is rare to see a film that is so totally convincing as Das Leben der Anderen.The movie focuses on Stasi agent Wiesler (Ulrich Mühe), and the wiretapping of Georg Dreyman (Sebastian Koch), a famed author, and actress Christa-Maria Sieland (Martina Gedeck).