The Lives of the Others

The Lives of the Others was the dark horse at this year’s Academy Award ceremony and its surprising win of Best Foreign Language Film over critics’ and my favorite Pan’s Labyrinth was the biggest upset of that night. Sony Pictures Classics decided to re-release the movie during the summer blockbuster season so any serious audience will have a chance to catch it instead of having to sit through one after another teenager-oriented fares.

After viewing it, I have to admit it is very well done in a conventional way. Above all, the script by director Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck is extremely strong. Donnersmarck does not dazzle audience with any special cinematic approaches; instead he focuses on telling a compelling and interesting story. Wiesler (played by Ulrich Muhe) is a long-time experienced secret agent of the notorious East German Stasi. When a high-ranking official becomes interested in Christa-Maria Sieland (played by Martina Gedeck), a famous actress, her boyfriend, the equally famous playwright Georg (played by Sebastian Koch) becomes the target of Stasi’s 24-hour surveillance in hope that there will be evidences of his subversion to put him in jail for good.

Donnersmarck’s gripping drama wastes little time in exposing the oppressive environment in communist East Germany before the fall of the wall. The dialogue and plot are tightly entwined and the traditional three acts of a movie script are developed beautifully. Even though the audience sees both the secret agent and his target and therefore knows both sides’ stories, one still gets riveted by the mind games each side plays.

Donnersmarck’s movie may have unintentionally hit too close to home for modern Americans. The tight surveillance under Stasi reminds audience of our contemporary computer-hacking, voice-activating and wire-tapping intrusion into private lives all in the name of counter-terrorism. When Wiesler talks about investigation techniques at the Stasi academy, it makes one shudder to see the similarities in our approach when questioning terrorist suspects. It is unfortunate that history seems to always mercilessly repeat itself.

Considering the entire movie is mainly built on an excellent script, I find the opening sequence and the ending are the weakest links in the plot lines. The movies opens with Wiesler interrogating a political prisoner. It is mixed with Wiesler’s lecture at the academy with the interrogation tapes played for the students to learn. The scene is great in revealing communist government’s ruthless nature, but it makes Wiesler’s later transition to a sympathizer of those political dissident highly implausible. For any one who has experienced communist regimes, the tragedy Georg and Christa have gone through happens more commonly than westerners may think. Years of working for Stasi should have made hard-case Wiesler particularly immune to those human tragedies. It is unclear why this case has affected Wiesler so deeply. There are some hints that Wiesler may have fallen in love with Christa himself, but Donnersmarck does not try to make that point clear. However, Muhe’s performance helps me overlook all the flaws in the script for his character. His steely eyes are mesmerizing and convey all the emotions for a man who is used to not revealing his feelings. He portrays Wiesler as someone torn between his communist idealism and disdain for corrupt socialism officials. He is brutal toward the state’s “enemies” while at the same time touched by his own loneliness and desire for something more. You believe every tic and quirk in that character. He is undoubtedly the most charismatic bald actor since Yul Brynner. Martina Gedeck of Mostly Martha (the movie has been remade by Hollywood and it is now in theater under the name of No Reservations with Catherine Zeta-Jones playing Gedeck’s old role) plays a completely different character in this movie. Her Christa is sexy and seductive. She loves performing and being with Georg. In the end, she is forced to choose only one. Gedeck was great in the light comedy Mostly Martha, but here she proves her wide acting range and dramatic assurance. Also for some reason European actresses just look better, sexier and more natural than their American counterparts, maybe because they are not obsessed with cosmetic surgeries and rather enjoy their new level of sensuality that comes with age. Donnersmarck obviously fashions Georg after himself. Koch even looks like him in the movie, but he is really the least developed character in the movie. Not for a minute did I buy his character’s naivety about the communist regime. How can he not be aware of communist mind-oppression while his best friend and apparently many others have been black-listed for one thing or another?

The ending of this movie is a sellout in the Hollywood tradition. I would prefer that it ends right after the climax. It would have been much more powerful and soul-shaking. Instead, Donnersmarck opts to have everything neatly revealed and everyone gets some kind of satisfaction. Unfortunately in real life rarely do things get resolved so perfectly!

The music in the movie is also a bit overwhelming at time. It seems that Donnersmarck doesn’t trust that his story alone can build up enough tension for the audience and he heavily depends on Gabriel Yared’s jarring music to add suspense. Yared writes fantastic music, but here it is simply overused in the movie and ends up distracting audience’s attention from the tense situations.

The Lives of the Others is a promising start for Donnersmarck’s film career and I look forward to all his future works. As for which movie was more worthy for that foreign film Oscar, my vote still goes to Pan’s Labyrinth. The Lives of the Others is an excellent movie done by the book while Pan’s Labyrinth has expanded conventions and brought the audience to a completely new level of excitement.