User Reviews

This film, set in the theater world of the mid-1980s, was particularly satisfying to me because I was a producer of avant-garde theater through the 1980s, based in San Francisco but often on tour -- including to international theater festivals in West Germany, communist Poland and communist Yugoslavia in 1987. Although my experience as an American was of course very different than the experience of these East Berliners, there is a mood and sense of personalities in this film that I found authentic and familiar. The people in this film feel like the people I met in the festival bars and refreshment centers for participating artists and on panel discussions in those festivals.

Many commenters here have noted the important character change of the Stasi agent, attributing the change either to his growing appreciation for the humanity of the playwright and the actress, or else complaining that the transformation is unpersuasive. So far as I've read in the comments, no one has focused on the key scene. When the Stasi agent hears the playwright and friends planning the suicide article to be smuggled to the West, he writes up an accurate report on this and hastens to his boss's office. Up until then, whatever sympathies he may have developed for the playwright or for the actress are inadequate to deter him.

But when the agent enters the boss's office, the boss doesn't immediately give him a chance to give the report or to say anything -- instead the boss immediately launches into a discussion of a new study analyzing how to interrogate and intimidate artists and writers. The report categorizes writers and artists into 5 basic personality types. The boss says the playwright is a "type 4." He describes how the prescribed approach to intimidate "type 4" writers will result in them losing hope and never writing again.

Only after hearing this, and realizing that his report exposing the playwright as the author of the suicide paper will result in the playwright being crushed emotionally and never even wanting to write anything new, does the Stasi agent curl up the report in his hands and decide not to give the report to his boss. The agent's precise motivation is unclear. But it cannot be merely that the agent wants the playwright to be able to continue writing new works. The agent must know that the state will never let the playwright do another play or publish anything, if the playwright's authorship of the suicide paper is known, and yet the agent was ready to expose the playwright anyway. So the agent's motive for suddenly deciding to hide his report is not merely because the state will put the playwright on a blacklist and block him from publishing or getting plays produced.

Thus it must be that the agent is motivated to change by feeling a general revulsion against the idea that the state should employ the crushing of hope, of creative spirit, as a strategy for responding to a dissenter whom the agent knows is a genuine supporter of the regime but who sees that it has flaws. It is the fact that the state will destroy the playwright's very desire to write, that causes the agent to change. It isn't clear whether the agent would draw back from inflicting that kind of punishment on any artist, even one whom he felt to be a real enemy of the state, but it is clear that he can't bring himself to inflict it on a man whom he feels is a "good" man like the playwright. And the agent believes the playwright is "good" because the playwright supports what is good about society, tries to correct what is wrong about society, is loyal even to a friend who has made powerful enemies, and treats his lover with compassion even when it appears the lover is betraying him.

And the irony -- a good irony -- is that by acting to preserve the playwright's desire to write, the agent winds up being the focus of the playwright's novel -- a novel born of a desire and drive to write that the agent himself kept the state from destroying.

Thus it seems to me that the real message of this movie is that even the most unimaginative, bland, uncreative, rigid people -- such as the Stasi agent -- should appreciate and protect the desire that drives creative people who are also "good" people to create works of art and literature.

Because this movie deals with recent German history, some German comments about it get sidetracked into minute historical discussions. Forget them; Das Leben der Anderen is an outstanding movie that should be seen everywhere.

The former East Germany, a relatively small country of 16 million people, was controlled by the most sophisticated, cunning, and thorough secret police the world has ever seen, the East German Ministerium für Staatsicherheit, or "Stasi." The Stasi had about 90,000 employees -- a staggering number for such a small population -- but even more importantly, recruited a network of hundreds of thousands of "unofficial employees," who submitted secret reports on their co-workers, bosses, friends, neighbors, and even family members. Some did so voluntarily, but many were bribed or blackmailed into collaboration.

Das Leben der Anderen, ("The Life of Others") German director Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck's debut, builds this painful legacy into a fascinating, moving film. In its moral seriousness, artistic refinement, and depth, Das Leben der Anderen simply towers over other recent German movies, and urgently deserves a wide international release. The fulcrum of the movie (but probably not its most important character) is Georg Dreyman, an up-and-coming East German playwright in his late 30s. Played by the square-jawed Sebastian Koch, Dreyman is an (apparently) convinced socialist who's made his peace with the regime. His plays are either ideologically neutral or acceptable, and he's even received State honors.

Although he is a collaborator, he is also a Mensch. He uses his ideological "cleanliness" to intervene on behalf of dissidents such as his journalist friend Paul Hauser (Hans-Uwe Bauer). These unfortunates must contend with every humiliation a totalitarian state can invent: their apartments are bugged, friends and family are recruited to inform on them, and chances to publish or perform can be extinguished by one stray comment from a Central Committee member. The most recalcitrant can be kicked out of the country and stripped of their citizenship, like the singer songwriter Wolf Biermann.

Dreyman lives in a shabby-genteel, book-filled apartment with his girlfriend Christa-Maria Sieland (Martina Gedeck), a renowned actress who often appears in his plays. At the beginning of the movie, Dreyman himself comes under the regime's suspicion, for reasons that become clear only later. The fearful machinery of the Stasi rumbles to life: his movements are recorded, and his apartment bugged. The Stasi had bugging down to a science: a team of meticulously-trained agents swoop into your apartment when you're not there, install miniscule, undetectable listening devices in every single room -- including the bathroom -- and vanish in less than an hour, leaving no trace. Agents set up an secret electronic command post nearby, keeping a written record of every joke, argument, or lovemaking session.

The "operative process" against Dreyman is overseen by Stasi captain Gerd Wiesler, played by Ulrich Mühe, an actor from the former East who was himself once in the Stasi's cross-hairs. Captain Wiesler starts the film as a colorless, icy, tight-lipped professional who shows no mercy in fighting the "enemies of socialism": if he needs to interrogate a suspect for 10 hours without sleep to get a confession, he will do so -- and then place the seat-cover the suspect sat on in a vacuum jar in case the miscreant should later need to be tracked by bloodhounds. At night, Captain Wiesler returns to his tiny apartment in an grubby, anonymous high-rise. He settles himself among his inexpressibly drab furniture, eats a meal squeezed out of a plastic tube while watching reports about agricultural production, and then goes to bed alone.

As Captain Wiesler listens to Dreyman and his girlfriend he begins to like them, or perhaps envy the richness and depth of their lives in comparison with his own. Perhaps he also begins to wonder why a stranger should have the right to become privy to Dreyman's most intimate secrets: his occasional impotence, his girlfriend's infidelities, his artistic crises. At the same time, though, Wiesler is under pressure: a Central Committee official has made it clear to Wiesler and his toadying supervisor Lieutenant Colonel Grubitz (Ulrich Tukur), that Dreyman has to go down.

I won't discuss more plot details, as there are unexpected twists. Each of the main characters is drawn deeper into the conflict between Dreyman and the State, and each is torqued by loyalty conflicts that intensify as the pressure increases. The cast is outstanding. Sebastian Koch finds the right combination of poetic detachment and watchful sophistication for Dreyman. Martina Gedeck, as his girlfriend, has the most challenging role, since she's buffeted from all sides: by her suspicious partner, by Stasi agents trying to turn her, and by a lecherous Culture Minister. Ulrich Mühe plays the Stasi agent's transformation with reserve, only hinting at the stages in his character's secret, but decisive, change of heart.

Director von Donnersmarck, a blue-blooded West German, has re-created the gray, drained look of the former East, and the nature of Stasi intimidation, with a fidelity that has earned the praise of East Germans. His pacing is relaxed, but doesn't drag; although there are a few longueurs, most scenes unfold at just the right pace, and there are several great set-pieces. One is a bone-rattling episode in the Stasi canteen in which a young recruit is caught telling a joke about East German premier Erich Honecker. Another is the penultimate scene, a masterstroke in which Dreyman gains access to his massive Stasi file, while reading it, suddenly understands episodes of his own life which had never made sense to him before. The ending is perfectly judged; bittersweet and moving without swelling strings or teary confessions.

Das Leben der Anderen is an outstanding movie, probably a great one. If it's not picked up for international distribution, it will be a bitter loss for thousands of potential moviegoers in other countries.

This movie comes along with many headlines claiming that there is now finally a realistic portrait of the G.D.R. (i.e., the former socialistic eastern part of Germany). Actually, it tells us much more about the present situation in Germany, the lack of critical awareness and anticipatory obedience.

The plot is quickly told. The East German minister for culture (Thomas Thieme) gets randy at a popular actress (Martina Gedeck, playing one of these notorious "beautiful faces of communism"), and orders the Stasi (East German Secret Service) to observe, and eventually eliminate, her lover, a conformist playwright (Sebastian Koch). Chain of command goes down to the Stasi captain (Ulrich Muehe, star of the movie), who initially keeps his duty with his approved loyalty, but questions his activities in the course of time and during this distant confrontation with his victim. Finally, of course, he becomes a "good man".

Probably you don't need to know East Germany to see how ridiculous this is. To name a few points, for the Nomenklatura of the communist party, political power was more than a perfect substitute for sex, to an extend that they were closely controlling that only puritanic characters would enter the inner circles, or getting expelled otherwise (e.g. Konrad Naumann). As often mentioned, a minister for culture hadn't the power to command the Stasi for such tasks. Moreover, East Germany was anxiously to keep the opportunistic (and even the semi-opportunistic) intellectuals in good mood, actually making this land a kind of paradise for a certain type of artists. Of course, nobody who suffered from a tough Stasi watchdog would believe the wonderful change of mind pictured here.

The movie has some good points. First, the actors are very good, especially brilliant (as usual) Mr. Muehe. Secondly, it is not on of these light-hearted comedies painting the G.D.R. with nostalgic colours (though it inherits some of their cheap jokes, like the running gags about the East German furniture).

Unfortunately, this second point doesn't make the movie more realistic. The G.D.R. WAS a non-democratic state, with a huge load of injustice and cruelty, but it didn't work this way (though it is obvious that the director got some advice for the technical details of surveillance, but that's not the point). Actually, the director (who has no experience with the GDR society, which was claimed to be a merit by the German media) perfectly reflects how an average West-German artist (due to his natural limitations in experience) imagines the past of the East. No wonder this movie is a success. First of all, the conflict in the G.D.R. was about the society, not about sex. This is of course hard to imagine for modern pop-artists, whose only contact with reality is sex, and therefore the only propelling force. Secondly, a realistic movie about the G.D.R. should NOT play in East Berlin. It was the city of the mandarins of the socialistic society, life was fair and easy compared with the rest of the land. There were good reasons why the revolution in 1989 didn't start there. Thirdly, one should not take over the stories of some pseudo-dissidents who invented fashionable curricula to get a good start in the other part of Germany. These stories were simply manufactured to flatter the new rulers and get easy money. Unfortunately, this movie does perfectly the same (for business details, it would also be instructive to analyze how helpful an aristocratic title in the neo-feudalistic German society is to get the money for the production and friendly media).

What is also painfully lacking, is a feeling for today's morals of the story. Indeed, a similar surveillance could happen nowadays in the course of "anti-terrorism" in many countries (again, the movie has nothing to do specifically with the G.D.R.). There is obviously some fear of the author's to show that many of the G.D.R. institutional criminals are now very successful in the "new" Germany. Do you want a really specific German Stasi story? Imagine a close friend of a high rank Stasi officer, who founded a "democratic" party in 1989 to infiltrate the movement and/or get along with the new times, and follow her way through many surprising turns and strange political miracles till she finally ends as the head of the "new" Germany.

This is the first full feature film by Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck and won him a Best Foreign Language Film Academy Award as well as an uncountable number of other awards all around the world. The film runs for roughly 2 hours and 15 minutes and does not drag a single second. The reason for this is FHvD's outstanding script and a cast that delivers 100% from minute 1, also including all the actors in smaller roles such as Thomas Thieme, who gives a great performance of an influential figure not scared of using his political power to his own sexual advantage. The standout is Ulrich Mühe showing us his character's transformation from a ruthless Stasi (secret police) agent into a caring human being who puts his own freedom at risk in order to oppose a political system built on fear that is as rotten as it gets and protect the people suffering from it. Merely from the political perspective, in my opinion, this is a movie that everybody needs to see, especially those with an interest in history. And even for those who are not particularly fond of political films, this is highly recommended as the characters and their interaction are written and portrayed with such wit and accuracy that I am not shy of calling it the best German movie ever made. And I have seen lots.

I cannot even mention a favorite scene, there are just too many: the joke at the cafeteria table, the boy in the elevator, the interrogation between Mühe and Gedeck, threatening the neighbor('s daughter), the red color on the files near the end, the suicide references and so on. Or I could simply mention the entire epilogue, i.e. everything that happens in the movie after the Fall of the Wall. When Dreyman reads his file or how Wiesler enters the bookstore in the end are maybe the most moving moment of this film. Wiesler's last words are completely genius and I wish all films could end on such a high note. In general, his character and his transformation are one of the most interesting things I have seen in movies in the last years. There are many moments one could analyze, so I will just mention one. Pay attention to how he is looking for real togetherness during his meeting with the prostitute and thus cannot understand the affair between Gedeck's and Thieme's character. His faith in the system crumbles more and more as he realizes everybody is just interested in themselves, while he initially believes in the idea(l) of socialism. But the people in his organization are so different compared to everything he believes in that finally the whole concept of the GDR crumbles in his mind before it crumbles in reality. There is no point anymore in punishing the people who offend his country as he realizes they are the ones who are correct and he uses all the means in his power to help them without becoming part of an investigation himself.

It's so sad to see that Ulrich Mühe died so quickly after this film, even before his posthumous BAFTA nomination. But we should be grateful to see the legacy he left us here. What surprises me a bit is that Henckel von Donnersmarck has worked so little in recent years. He only made one movie in the nine years since "Das Leben der Anderen" (a forgettable thriller with Johnny Depp and Angelina Jolie) and there is nothing upcoming on his body of work either. Maybe he really was a one-trick pony, but boy was that trick magnificent. A must-see. Perfect score.

Germany has produced some very good movies recently ... but this one is in a class of its own. The main power of a quality movie, for me, has always been two things, a good story and mood - and this film has both. The story keeps you interested through all 139 minutes. You actually feel yourself transported to the 1980s of the former German republic. They have carefully chosen locations that looks east-germanish ... lots of "Trabant" cars on the streets :-) and the general grayish mood is very well recreated. The ordinary peoples fear of the Stasi is realistically portrayed. And i just love the twist in the story in the last 20 minutes or so. A brilliant movie that anyone even remotely interested in non-mainstream movies should see.

When I first heard about Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck's film "Das Leben der Anderen" and the issue it dealt with, I instantly tipped it to be one of the must-see films. As a great cinema-goer and a genuine admirer of the European cinematography, I was overwhelmed with a notion that a succession of thought-provoking German films would be continued with this moving insight into the lives of others at a very delicate period of the 80s in East Germany. After months of waiting, the Serbian audience was presented with "Das Leben der Anderen" during The Belgrade Film Festival and we related to it to the extent that whilst leaving the cinema many of us commented on how pleased we would be to see it win the Oscar. And it did, the very same night.

What makes "Das Leben der Anderen" so brilliant to me is the choice of topic- an account of the years of dangerous living in East Germany, during which almost everyone was dubbed suspicious by the Stasi, until after careful and detailed examination the opposite was proved, the obsession with the non-existent enemies of the non-existent prosperity, the overall greyness of the atmosphere in East Berlin. And then, there is also the process that the character of Wiesler undergoes, unveiling the emptiness of his own existence, the process presented with the subtle pace that Donnersmarck dexterously set. The ending is one of the most powerful ones that I have ever seen, containing just the right words- It is for me- spoken by a man who for the first time in his life seems to be doing something for himself, a man who had no life of his own, who lived through other people's lives, but also- It is for me- the words spoken to denote that somebody out there (Dreyman) actually dedicated something (Die Sonate vom guten Menschen) to him.

A gripping story of what happened somewhere in East Berlin to somebody else, not us, or maybe a reminder of what happened to many of us at some other place, at some other time, a reminder that came to life through the lives of others somewhere in Berlin.

So powerful, so beautifully crafted. A true gem.

10/10

This was my favorite film at Telluride. Everyone with whom I talked had the same feeling. It generated the most "buzz." I hope it has a wide audience in the US. The acting by those who experienced the Stasi was moving and believable. Ulrich Muhe as the Stasi Officer was brilliant. Most of us cried during the final scene. Florian Henckel-Donnersmarck's direction with its twists and turns kept the audience glued to the screen. Because of the film's popularity, it was scheduled again for another showing at the festival. Both Muhe and Henckel-Donnersmarck were present and were stopped where ever they went during the festival. I recommend this film and gave it a 10.

I think this is a film which (for some to me mysterious reason) was loved by the critics, and has then been pumped up to the status of a masterpiece through the media by those same critics (someone once said: 'repeat a lie long enough and everybody will believe it eventually'). This is one of those films where if you dare say anything negative about it, you cannot call yourself an intellectual any more in most 'well to do circles'. The problem is, this film isn't a masterpiece. It's a slightly-above-average film, telling a compelling story that could have been told so much better.

What is missing is that there is no "feeling" in this film, the viewer is in no way transported into the atmosphere of those dark times, the oppressive society that once was (to better understand what I mean, you should watch 'Goodbye Lenin' which although essentially a comedy (satire), is immeasurably better in depicting those times in East Berlin). There is no real feeling of danger, the characters seem unreal, and consequently we don't care what happens to them. Even the most dramatic scene in the film when one of the main characters commits suicide, I don't think anyone is really moved!

Last but not least, the "main issue" of the film, the transformation of a fanatic communist and secret agent of the infamous Stasi into a sentimental, self-destructive, pathetic traitor is totally unbelievable (but maybe politically correct nowadays). Unfortunately, that is not the way things work in real life. No, This film is definitely not a masterpiece...