Review: The Lives of Others



Set in East Berlin in the early 80s, wherein a playwright (Sebastian Koch) and his actress girlfriend (Martina Gedeck) are to be monitored by Stasi (the secret police) master interrogator Ulrich Muhe, a reserved sort, who heads up a surveillance operation, suspecting that the playwright isn’t the good socialist he claims to be and hoping to get the dirt on him. However, the more he hears, the deeper he becomes engrossed in these people’s lives (hence the title) and generally disillusioned about what he is doing. Thomas Thieme plays a minister with the hots for Gedeck, distrust of Koch, and higher ambitions for himself.

 

2006 Oscar winner for Best Foreign film, this German film from debutante director Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck (now say that ten times fast!) suffers from “Rear Window” syndrome. Just like in that overrated film, we are forced to watch some guy watching someone else, or in this case, listen to someone else (another overrated film, “The Conversation” comes to mind). And also like said overrated film, neither the watcher/listener nor his subject(s) happen to be terribly interesting (Was I supposed to connect with Muhe because he was a lonely man? Hey, I live a pretty solitary existence too, but I ain’t at the stage where I’m calling up hookers like this guy does…well, not yet anyway…) At least “Rear Window” had Jimmy Stewart, the only interesting person in this film is the blacklisted theatre director friend of Koch’s, played by Volkmar Kleinert, and he’s not really a major part of the film.

 

It’s well-made for what it is (though Muhe’s behaviour in the last reel isn’t quite plausibly conveyed), but what it is simply didn’t interest or engage me, despite Muhe’s fine work in the lead. Scripted by the director, movies about voyeurs simply don’t interest me, I’m afraid. Perhaps the film will mean more to Germans (I’m not against foreign-language films in the slightest, but not so much the arthouse stuff), and it sure is popular with the high-brow crowd. I was left cold.

 

Rating: C+

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