The Lives of Others

Monochromatic apartment buildings, box-like cars, a hovering despair, an unspeakable paranoia –  this is East Germany of the 1980s, the subject of The Lives of Others.  The protagonist is a loyal member of the Stasi (State Security), whose days are orderly yet vacant.  His superiors assign him to monitor a playwright, whom they suspect of subversive activities.  In East Germany of that time, monitoring means wiring the playwright’s home, listening to his every word, and watching him without rest.  As our protagonist listens in on the lives of these others (the playwright and his girlfriend), he empathizes with their plight and begins to see the brokenness of the regime for which he works.  So changed does he become that he covers up the playwright’s unpatriotic activities, thereby risking his own career.  After the Berlin Wall falls and the Soviet edifice crumbles, the playwright discovers what the Stasi agent did for him and is moved by the charity of this unknown man.

The movie is a striking portrayal of an era.  The suffocating surveillance of the Stasi fills the country with fear.  Yet not just fear, but also hopelessness.  Characters are faced with a dilemma.  They can accept the state of affairs and go on with their humdrum but shackled lives.  Or they can risk the danger of speaking out and perhaps losing all that they cherish.  A few characters compromise.  But even those that do not are by no means pure freedom fighters.  The struggles of ordinary humans in an oppressive state is the theme of the movie, and our protagonist lives this struggle most poignantly, working within and eventually against the Stasi.  Most interestingly, however, his reasons for doing so are never fully apparent.  He does not appear motivated by ideology, but rather by empathy – empathy for the people whom he monitors.

William Buckley Jr. apparently considered this one of the best movies ever made.  That may be hyperbole.  But this is certainly a classic.