Originally Posted by Holden Pike
I disagree with your assessment of the purpose and therefore the quality of the play within the movie. The character of Dreyman is a well-regarded playwrite, but the bigger point is that his plays are inoffensive enough and restrained to the point where they are trumpeted by the establishment and actually aren't very artistic or deep. That's why even though he gets some attention in the West he is allowed to flourish in the GDR. The other story point is that when his plays were directed by his friend who is an intellectual who did not hide his beliefs and politics they are greater than they are on the page. Now that the director who had the spirit of rebellion has been blacklisted, his plays are showing their mediocrity and lack of real substance.
This may be how you've explained it to yourself, but this is why I think you're wrong.
While the piece of the play that opens the film and reappears later in a production after the fall of The Wall is highlighted,
It seemed to me that, by showing bits of the play at the beginning, and
especially by showing the same play after the fall of The Berlin wall, they were trying to show what a brilliant playwrite he was. Otherwise there wouldn't have been a point in showing the same play, one that you say is supposed to be shallow and mediocre because of the pressure he endured in the regime...the pressure is no longer there, yet the play is still there, and it's still mediocre, amateur, pretentious bullsh
it.
Another problem I had was with the scene after the play near the end, when he's confronted with the ex-DDR official that, if I'm not mistaken, ordered the surveillance. Instead of being extremely angry with him, getting even, somehow,even just by punching the arrogant official, he just stood there like a spineless twat that he was. I guess ultimately that's my issue, I hate spineless cowards, and that's what he appeared to be, despite the supposed act of heroism by publishing the article.
The writing that gets most of the attention in the narrative is not his play but his essay about his friend's suicide and the repression of art and humanity inside East Germany. THAT is the writing where he finally takes off the metaphorical gloves and pours his heart, soul and every bit of his art into. THAT is the piece he is willing to risk everything for, including banishment from his art, possible imprisonment and even death. That piece of writing I found incredibly pointed and moving and just as subversive and brilliant as it is supposed to be.
The play within the movie is only a background function. It's the essay that is key.
But that's the thing, I had a problem with the essay, all I heard from it was "the DDR hides the real number of suicides bla bla bla". Given that there wasn't any journalistic work displayed in the film, I was wondering where all this stuff was coming from, and ultimately, what the hell was the big deal about it.
Way to give away plot spoilers to a movie that hasn't even really opened theatrically in the U.S.,
Yeah right, as if anyone here will actually go and see the film. Most people here don't give a toss about foreign language films, so I'm guessing this wont matter much.
but putting that aside for the moment I think you've missed the point again. Whatever her self-esteem as a woman and an actress, the point of her affair with the official is that he is blackmailing her with the power and influence of his position into having sex with him. It's clear from the scenes between those two characters and the shower she takes after one of their meetings that she is being raped, and that's exactly how she feels. She does have insecurities that are able to be exploited when she's in the interrogation room and that Hauptmann is able to message in the scene at the bar where he gets her to return to Dreyman, but that's not why she betrays her lover.
She betrays her lover because she's a spineless slut. One threat of making problems for her career or the career of her partner and she cheats on him. That was the point where I stopped caring much about this character.
Her suicide, since I guess we're going to ruin the ending for others, is not about her being "spineless" (my goodness what a heartless tart you've made her out to be),but because under the pressure of interrogation and threatened with prison and never being able to act again, in a moment of emotional torture and despair she does turn Dreyman in.
Never said she was heartless, only a spineless coward. Technically, it should have been rather brilliant of von Donnersmarck to portray simple folk that buckle under pressure, but the fact is, I have a lot of difficulty feeling sympathy for unheroic characters. When I don't feel sympathy for them, I find it hard to get emotionally involved in the film and it turns out bleak as DLDA had.
Because she can't possibly know that Wiesler is on their side and has removed the evidence, the second she sees on Dreyman's face that he knows it was her who turned him in rather than witness his heartbreak and the prospect of living with her own shame and guilt she kills herself. It wasn't an act of weakness, it was an act of despair.
Despair
is weakness. Instead of facing her problems she buckles under pressure, again, and takes the easy way out.
By the "extremely cheesy ending" do you mean Dreyman's research into his case files, the decision he makes with the information he learns and the bit with Wiesler at the bookstore?
Most definitely, after having spent the last hour or so being completely unable to relate to anything in the film, this pathetic, cheesy attempt at inducing some sort of emotion seemed like something a highschooler would have written.
I loved
The Lives of Others, easily one of the very best movies I've seen this past year or so. Different strokes, I reckon.
Tell you the truth, I don't know why I had such a different experience of this film, I'm usually one to agree with the prevailing view about films, but this one just flew over my head I guess.
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