The Lives of Others Film Review

I am currently studying an MA in Creative Enterprise with Management and Arts at the University of Reading.  This term I am doing an International Study Visit module, and we are going to Berlin in February reading week.

One of my aims for the trip is to research further how art is used to depict events that have happened in Berlin and how this has had an affect on the viewers.  In preparation for the module we have a list of films we can choose from that are related to Berlin:

• Aeon Flux, Karyn Kusama, 2005
• Berlin Alexanderplatz, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, 1980.
• Cabaret, Bob Fosse, 1972.
• We Children From Bahnhof Zoo, Christiane F – Wir Kinder From Bahnhof Zoo, Uli Edel, 1981.
• Deutschland 83, Anna & Jeorg Winger, 2015.
• Downfall, Oliver Hirschbiegel, 2004.
• Funeral in Berlin, Guy Hamilton, 1966.
• Germany Year Zero, Roberto Rossellini, 1948
• Goodbye, Lenin!, Wolfgang Becker, 2003
• One, Two, Three, Billy Wilder, 1961
• People on Sunday (Menschen am Sonntag), Curt and Robert Siodmak, 1930
• Rosenstrasse, Margarethe von Trotta, 2003.
• Run Lola Run, Tom Tykwer, 1998
• The Lives of Others (Das Leben der Anderen), Florian Henckel von
• The Spy Who Came In From The Cold, Martin Ritt, 1965.
• The Mysteries of Berlin, Cordelia Swann, 1979-82.
• The Bourne Supremacy, Paul Greengrass, 2004
• Wings of Desire (Der Himmel über Berlin), Wim Wenders, 1987

I chose The Lives of Others, released in 2007, and directed by Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, an award-winning political thriller set in 1980s East Germany.  Captain Wiesler (pictured below) works for the Stasi, the secret police, and is asked to keep surveillance on a playwright, Georg Dreyman, whose loyalty to the party is under question.  Wiesler arranges arranges for every wall and floor surface of Dreyman's apartment to be threaded with wires, tapped so that, while perched in an upstairs attic, he can listen out for evidence of treachery.  During the surveillance Weisler is slowly drawn into Dreyman's life and begins to question his own ideals.

Image from bbc.co.uk

The film starts with Wiesler teaching a group of students in interrogation techniques.  The captive had been kept awake for many hours and had started to become upset.  Wiesler ignores the emotion being heard from the recording and listens instead to the precise use of language to indicate guilt, advising that an innocent person would be angry and protest, whereas a guilty one sticks to their story and cries at the inevitability of being caught in a lie.

Wiesler's demeanour is very impassive, quietly taking in other peoples' actions, assessing them through his many years of experience as a Stasi officer.  As the film progresses, his detachment weakens.  He becomes thoroughly absorbed in the lives of Dreyman and his girlfriend actress, Christa-Maria Sieland, drawing out their apartment layout in the surveillance room and following them around the rooms, even mimicking them cuddled up in bed.

The film sets themselves are very bland in colouring, as is the functional clothing worn by the characters, reflecting the utilitarian nature of East Germany at that time.  When the Berlin Wall finally comes down there is a shift towards more colour in the scenes and more fashionable clothing.

It is hard to imagine the level of control on peoples' lives when living in East Germany, the daily fears and suspicions they would have endured.  The Lives of Others depicts some of this feeling, however I thought some parts of the story were not covered in detail, and it is only from my additional research into the film that I now understand what it was trying to achieve.  This may be down to the film being subtitled and so the viewer has to concentrate on reading the translation rather than being able to freely watch the action on the screen. I also found that I may have projected feelings onto the actors; I kept waiting for Wiesler to condem Dreyman with the information he had gathered on him based on the first scene of the film and my understanding of the regime, but Wiesler turns out to be a saviour and protector when Dreyman is investigated by the Stasi.  A part of me then wanted the film to be based on a true story, however, a Guardian article from 2007 by Anna Funder, advises this could never have happened:

"The thoroughness of the regime was horrifying: it accumulated, in the 40 years of its existence, more written records than in all of German history since the Middle Ages. East Germany was run on fear and betrayal: at least one in 50 people - by CIA estimates, one in seven - were informing on their relatives, friends, neighbours and colleagues. People were horrified to discover what had happened, again, in their country; what human beings were capable of."

I am interested in finding out more about the time just before the fall of the Berlin Wall, and just afterwards, how it affected peoples' lives and how artists portrayed these events.  This will be the focus of some of my future research for this module.

Image from IMP Awards, 2007