The Lives of Others

Some films are about archetypes, not people. Films set during a historical time period are often guilty of this technique, casting its characters as either heroic rebels or villainous tyrants. Such films make the world seem as if it exists only in black and white, right and wrong, good and evil. Sometimes this method of storytelling results in hollow spectacle, as in the upcoming ‘Sparta vs. Persia’ battle flick 300. Yet it can also work gloriously with the material, as it did with my favorite film of last year, Pan’s Labyrinth. The archetypes in that film—a young girl representing the formidable purity of innocence, and her stepfather embodying the monstrous oppression of fascism—strengthened the power of its faerie tale structure, set against postwar Spain circa 1944. The Lives of Others takes place exactly four decades after Labyrinth, during a time that was in its own quiet way, equally oppressive. Yet the extraordinary thing about Others is how it succeeds in actually being about intricately complex human beings, not simply good guys and bad guys.

East Germany, 1984: the Ministry for State Security—known as the Stasi—monitors the entire population, and suppresses those who are suspected to be foes of Socialism. A particularly loyal member of this secret police is Hauptmann Gerd Wiesler, played by Ulrich Muhe. He’s a secret service agent sent to investigate successful playwright Georg Dreyman—Sebastian Koch—labeled by the Cultural Dept. head as “our only non-subversive writer.” Dreyman’s girlfriend, the famous actress Christa-Maria Sieland—Martina Gedeck—has caught the lustful eye of Stasi minister Hempf—Thomas Thieme. Wiesler believes the handsome couple couldn’t possibly be as innocent as they seem, and decides to wire Dreyman’s apartment. As he listens intently to their every move and word, Wiesler undergoes a profound transformation, and the film builds its dramatic tension so brilliantly that the audience becomes as thoroughly engrossed as the lone Stasi observer.

This is the feature debut for 33-year-old writer/director Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, and it’s one of the most stunning debuts in recent memory. There isn’t a trace of amateurish clumsiness or chaotic audacity on display in Donnersmarck’s first major cinematic canvas—his past work includes only short subjects and television. Instead, the young director exhibits the assured craft, measured pace, and sharp insight of a veteran master. He doesn’t go to elaborate heights to impress his viewers; instead, he pulls back and simply observes these human lives in all their confliction, passion, and desperation. Viewers may find themselves identifying with the characters they were prepared to despise, and that’s the genius of Donnersmarck’s method. Each of his human subjects is much more complex than when he or she first appears onscreen. Rarely has the simple act of watching characters think, interact, and develop, been so fascinating, rewarding, and downright scary.

While Donnersmarck’s achievement is certainly impressive, the work of his cast and crew deserves equal adulation. Muhe’s towering portrayal is the glue that holds the entire picture together. At first his character seems like the icily cynical type usually played by Kevin Spacey, who spends the entire movie sizing up everyone around him with amused detachment. Yet there is so much more going on within Muhe’s hypnotically cold eyes. In a way, his performance is every bit the equal of Helen Mirren’s work in The Queen, because so much of the film’s success depends on the exquisite subtlety of Wiesler’s psychological journey—none of which I will further elaborate upon. Both Koch and Gedeck turn in equally sterling work, as their characters’ relationship develops unforeseen complexities of its own. The persistent score by Stephane Moucha and Gabriel Yard has the mesmerizing quality of Philip Glass, yet never becomes overbearing. There are also some refreshing injections of humor that spawn from natural human absurdity, never from cheap satire. And the final moments of the film are about as perfect and dramatically satisfying as an ending can possibly be.

There are many filmgoers who had rooted for Lives of Others to win the Best Foreign Film award over Pan’s Labyrinth during last weekend’s Oscar ceremony. Though I disagree with such an opinion, I see where it’s coming from. Though Others didn’t shake me to my very core the way Labyrinth did, it gradually proved to be just as haunting and frighteningly relevant of a masterwork in its own right. It seems that Donnersmarck’s gift, above all else, is to identify with the humanity in each of his characters—no matter how seemingly vile they are. He’s referred to this film as a frightening ‘self-portrait,’ since he imagined himself as each of the characters as he wrote them. His goal was to discover his own inner-enemy, because as he wrote in FLM magazine, the result of a successful film is like “a wiretap in a confessional booth – much is revealed, and our eyes are riveted to the screen.” The ultimate revelation in The Lives of Others is that the characters’ lives are not all that different from our own—a fact more unsettling the longer one contemplates it.

Rating: ***** (out of *****)