Film Critics: The Life of the Others (Das Leben der Anderen)

Katja Wolff

The Best Non-English Film at the latest Oscars was the German movie The Lives of Others (original German title: Das Leben der Anderen). True, it was produced in Germany, by German actors, and German movie producers, dealing with a German topic. But still, wasn’t it a movie on another Germany?
Sadly enough, most people outside of Germany are quick in connecting the country to Hitler and the Nazi times – and we know why. But even in most recent history, the German one was absolutely noteworthy. Germany was not always THE Germany. After World War Two ended, the country became a mirror of the fallout of the former allies – and got divided into two parts.
The one, on the west, called Federal Republic of Germany, split into three zones of occupation (by the US, France, Great Britain), was turned into a democratic and capitalist state, was one of the six founding members of today’s European Union, and has been a NATO member since 1955.
The other, on the east, the German Democratic Republic (GDR), became part of the Eastern Block, a communist dictatorship that considered itself democratic was set up, it joined the Soviet led Warsaw (military) Pact, and had planned economy with “five year plans”.
Only after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, which had been set up in 1961 by the GDR in order to prevent the intellectual drain from the country as too many were fleeing to “the West”, Germany became THE Germany we know today. That is, the former eastern part could be peacefully integrated into the western Federal Republic. However, the forty years of communist rule and division of culture and education left deep traces in people’s minds. As of today Germany has not fully overcome this recent history’s heritage yet.
After the first years of extreme excitement of the former East Germany’s population in the early 1990s to finally be able to travel freely all around the world, to buy whatever they can or can’t afford, and to talk and discuss politics as critical and openly as they always wanted to, a little renaissance awoke in many people’s minds remembering the positive aspects and memories of the things that had united the east German people in the former GDR which they couldn’t get rid off fast enough after its fall – desperately seeking for a new life (style), that of the “Golden West”.
These “eastalgic” feelings were pushed forward by a series of movies on life in the GDR like “Sonnenallee” (which is the name of a street in Berlin that was separated by the Berlin Wall – resulting in one side of the street in the west, the other in the east), “Goodbye, Lenin” (a comedy about the fall of the wall and how people dealt with the cultural shock being thrown from communism into – almost – pure capitalism), or “NVA” (short for “Nationale Volksarmee”, which was the GDR’s army and every man had to do service in it for about three years).
However, at the same time as Germany produced its first comedian movie on Hitler, a more serious way was found to deal with more recent history.
Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck (33), director of the movie and writer of the screenplay, staged his 137 minute long drama in November 1984 in the eastern part of Berlin. A lieutenant colonel of GDR’s secret police (called “Stasi”), which built up a complex system of control and surveillance in order to secure the states power, hopes to push his career by launching a secret operation on the successful dramatist Georg Wiesner (Sebastian Koch).
In the following, Wiesner’s home is completely bugged. Captain Gerd Wiesler (Ulrich Mühe), leader of the surveillance operation, is now listening every single day to what Wiesner and his girlfriend Christa-Maria Sieland (Martina Gedeck), a famous east German actress, tell each other, how they love each other, and becomes a testimony of their true faces.
Industriously, Wiesler types down every move or sentence made or spoken in the apartment, and creates a large file on Wiesner. But with time, listening to the life of the others, he recognizes the shabbiness of his own life, and starts sympathizing with those he is supposed to spy on.
Being trapped between his boss who wants to see Wiesner fall, and the sympathy with Sieland and Wiesner, he tries to protect the two from the cruel machinery. But he cannot stop it any more, Wiesner’s and Sieland’s love is forced into ruin, Wiesler’s career is over, and still there are five years to go until the nightmare of the GDR’s surveillance system is finally over. Before that all three of the main characters had to pay a high price.