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The Lives of Others (2006)
Director: Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck
Writer: Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck
Cast: Ulrich Mühe, Martina Gedeck, Sebastian Koch
About: Set in 1984 in communist East Berlin, Germany. The Stasi secret police are conducting surveillance of a suspected subversive writer and his girlfriend. The agent finds himself strangely drawn into the lives of his two targets.
Review: First off, the subject matter of Communist East German Secret Police and their network of agents and informers and how they operate...is right up my alley! I love this subject matter, because it's history. I love history, especially history that hasn't been covered much in movies.
I found the first act totally fascinating: the Stasi secret police headquarters and the interrogation of a suspect who's being grilled because his friend had escaped to the west. Even better was the scene of the interrogator teaching a class of Stasi candidates the finer points on how to break a person over hours of sleep deprivation and how the innocent act under duress vs how differently the guilty act....Man powerfully stuff! I had this film pegged at a 5/5.
But then the film shifts gears and becomes an introspective look at a lonely Stasi police officer and how the lives of a writer and his actresses girlfriend changes his outlook on life. That part was well done, but it was so not want I wanted to see. I wanted to see a film more like the first act.
I felt the natural ending of the film was when the writer, a few years latter encountered the ex minister at a stage play and tells him it was people like him who made life miserable. I thought that should have been the end of the movie, but then we get another epilogue about the ex Stasi agent years latter. That seemed to me to dilute the power of the previous scene. Sometimes less is more.
The Lives of Others (2006)
Director: Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck
Writer: Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck
Cast: Ulrich Mühe, Martina Gedeck, Sebastian Koch
About: Set in 1984 in communist East Berlin, Germany. The Stasi secret police are conducting surveillance of a suspected subversive writer and his girlfriend. The agent finds himself strangely drawn into the lives of his two targets.
Review: First off, the subject matter of Communist East German Secret Police and their network of agents and informers and how they operate...is right up my alley! I love this subject matter, because it's history. I love history, especially history that hasn't been covered much in movies.
I found the first act totally fascinating: the Stasi secret police headquarters and the interrogation of a suspect who's being grilled because his friend had escaped to the west. Even better was the scene of the interrogator teaching a class of Stasi candidates the finer points on how to break a person over hours of sleep deprivation and how the innocent act under duress vs how differently the guilty act....Man powerfully stuff! I had this film pegged at a 5/5.
But then the film shifts gears and becomes an introspective look at a lonely Stasi police officer and how the lives of a writer and his actresses girlfriend changes his outlook on life. That part was well done, but it was so not want I wanted to see. I wanted to see a film more like the first act.
I felt the natural ending of the film was when the writer, a few years latter encountered the ex minister at a stage play and tells him it was people like him who made life miserable. I thought that should have been the end of the movie, but then we get another epilogue about the ex Stasi agent years latter. That seemed to me to dilute the power of the previous scene. Sometimes less is more.