Europe Endless - Germany: The Lives of Others (Dir Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, 2h17m, 2006)

Germany. The history of German cinema is impossible to outline in a single column. For those interested, I recommend the excellent, if expensive A New History of German Cinema (Boydell & Brewer, 2012), but its history is intertwined with cinema, and European cinema, as a whole, birthing the horror movie, Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror, (Dir. F. W. Murnau, 1922), and science fiction, via Metropolis (Dir Fritz Lang, 1927). The aftermath of the Second World War would leave Germany, and its cinema, divided between the democratic West embracing New German Cinema, Herzog, Wenders, Fassbinder et al, and the Communist East largely stifled by the censorship and heavy restrictions of GDR leader Erich Honecker, reduced to propaganda films and fairytales. Reunified Germany has subsequently gone from strength to strength cinematically, with three Best Foreign Language Film Oscars since 1990.

Yet, there is little cinema concerning this period; much of it, like Goodbye Lenin (Dir. Wolfgang Becker, 2003) and Sonnenallee (Sun Alley, Dir. Leander Haußmann, 1999), is comedic, despite the subject matter, whilst others, like Go Trabi Go (Dir Peter Timm, 1991), openly revel in nostalgia for the departed East Germany. Few films prior to The Life of Others considered the other side of the GDR, the labyrinthine workings of the Stasi, the GDR's secret police and the deep paranoia of a nation under surveillance; the film does both, focusing on a single Stasi agent, Gerd Wiesler (the late Ulrich Mühe) and his bugging and subsequent stake-out of playwright Georg Dreyman (Sebastian Koch), and the entanglement that begins to compromise Weisler's view of his job and his nation.

This film centres on the transformation of one man, of Weisler, from cog in the GDR machine to resisting against it. We begin with the Stasi officer, and the interrogation of a suspect: even here, there is the use of the audio-tapes that he records confessions of arrested citizens, the film cutting back and between the interview, and Weisler in the classroom, dispassionately dissecting the audio and the process by which he, and by extension, the Stasi, "knows" his suspect is lying. This is Weisler-as-Stasi as the GDR, cool and clinical, the performance measured, his retort to students absolute. Yet, there is, much like The Conversation (Dir, Francis Ford Coppola, 1974), a degree of voyeurism that director von Donnersmarck invites us to partake in, watching Weisler listen on lives that, like Hackman's Harry, are richer and more fulfilled than his own. 

There is an utter sense of paranoia; when told to observe Dreyman, there is the ruthless efficiency of the Stasi, the utter control, not merely in breaking into the writer's flat and in the threat issued to Dreyman's neighbour that her daughter's university application will be denied if she reveals anything. We see this again in interactions with his immediate superior, Grubitz (Ulrich Tukur) where the two overhear a member of staff joking about the regime and Grubitz tears into him, denouncing his ridicule of the party and threatening the man with demotion, until, with a sadistic twist, he reveals this to be little more than his joke. The Stasi's reach and control of the GDR thus appears absolute, and Weisler as little more than an extension of it. This can even be seen in the film's oppressive colour palate of muted greys and browns, and run down flats, the cinematography by Hagen Bogdanski matching the painstaking recreation of late 1980s East Berlin

Here, then, the observed, the unwittingly recorded and surveilled. Dreyman's life is very different from Weisler's; at once, he leads the life of the model citizen, has a love-life, and a social one, that the Stasi man and his assistant (Charly Hübner) vicariously record and voyeuristically listen in to, but that is many times more fulfilling than the empty reportage and equally hollow lives that both the officers lead. We see Weisler frequent a prostitute who all but hurries through the motions, we see him puzzle over a book of Bertold Brecht's poetry, (after all, a passionate socialist), whose work not only influences Dreyman but preludes, together with the piano piece that Dreyman plays, Weisler's change of heart. The film's very being, as director von Donnersmarck would later comment, comes from Beethoven's Appassionata, a favourite piece of Lenin, and the idea of the surveillance, the confessions of the enemies of the state, sounding like beautiful music. 

The author and playwright is clearly at danger; not only from his surveillance from the Stasi, further complicated by his girlfriend's relationship with sleazy Culture Minister, Hempf (Thomas Thieme), and Dreyman's work on articles for the West German Der Spiegel, on a typewriter that he must hide, symbolically staining his fingers red. Yet, we see Weisler become embroiled, and, undeniably, begin to empathise, with the man he is spying on, whose life he has vicariously enmeshed himself in. We, like he, are on the outside looking in, as the tape unspools and the net tightens around Dreyman, and the Stasi man must decide between remaining a passive recorder and making a difference to the lives he records. 

Yet, The Lives Of Others does not merely report on a bygone era; we are more surveilled than we have ever been, at levels that the Stasi can only have dreamed of. Weisler is a figure of fiction, but against these ever more intrusive systems, real people have taken the message of The Lives of Others to heart, from Edward Snowden to those protesting against the erosion of their civil liberties. Even placing its notable legacy to one side, The Lives of Others is a remarkable glimpse into the nature of an authortarian society, and a man rebelling against it. 

Rating: Must See

The Lives of Others is available on DVD from Lionsgate Home Entertainment. It is not available to stream in the UK.

Next week, to the Netherlands, as the estranged relationship between a father and son in 1930s Amsterdam turns lethal in Character