Sympathy for
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by MARK SLUTSKY
The debut feature from the young
and floridly named German director Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, The
Lives of Others (Das Leben der Anderen) has been knockin’ ’em dead
at film festivals over the last six months, and is also a contender for
the Best Foreign Film Oscar. Von Donnersmarck grew up in West Berlin,
though family connections often took his family to the East, and it’s
in the hermetic and fascinatingly strange world of the GDR and its
often contradictory rules and unspoken codes of conduct that the film,
part thriller and part character drama, dwells.
Set in the ’80s, The Lives
of Others stars Ulrich Mühe as Captain Gerd Wiesler, a top
agent in the Stasi, the East German secret police. Mühe is a
ruthlessly effective wiretapper and information gatherer, with the
ability to penetrate and destroy anyone’s life, should he choose to do
so. Only he’s not quite the villain of the piece. Actually, not at all,
for as von Donnersmarck’s camera follows him, we realize that this is
not so much a bad man as one driven by duty, one who’s possessed of an
almost childlike earnestness and deep faith in his cause.
Our Captain is put on the case
of Georg Dreyman (Sebastian Koch), a well-known playwright who
possesses the rare dual trait of being both loyal to the GDR and
respected outside its borders. But as he’s romantically involved with
actress Christa-Maria Sieland (Martina Gedeck), who the Minister of
Culture (Thomas Thieme) lusts after, he’s declared suspicious.
Mühe sets up his apparatus in Koch’s apartment, taking up a secret
residence in the writer’s attic and observing the minute details of his
life. This bizarre intimacy, combined with the brazen charlatanry of
the Minister’s orders, cause somewhat of a psychic shift in the
dedicated agent, who begins to question his loyalty for the first time
in his life.
There’s something deliberately
domestic about this movie, taking place as it does so much in people’s
homes, in moments that are assumed private. Yet in a society like East
Germany, with its networks of informers and its wired lampshades and
listening rooms, there’s no such thing as guaranteed privacy, and The
Lives of Others evokes that very well. Mühe in particular,
who himself in real life was an actor in the GDR, and whose wife spied
on him for the Stasi (as well as members of his theatre group, who also
informed on him), is wonderful as Captain Wiesler, managing to make a
character who should be, by all rights, completely unlikeable magnetic
and even touching.
Donnersmarck also evokes
the period beautifully in the film’s production design and choice of
costuming. The film operates on a limited palette of greys and greens,
and everything from Koch’s charmingly shabby pre-war apartment to
Mühe’s drab jacket strike the perfect notes of scruffiness and
functionality.
What does seem a bit off is the film’s last third or so, which veers towards the melodramatic. Without giving anything away, the film’s cool composure gives way to a tearjerker tendency. It got the film a big emotional reaction at the fests but it doesn’t quite feel right. Still, this is a consummately entertaining and engrossing movie and is highly recommended. THE LIVES OF OTHERS
OPENS THIS FRIDAY, FEB. 9
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