Review of The Lives of Others (2006) by Roger P — 05 Oct 2011

"The Lives of Others" is a superb film about life in East Germany in the years leading up to the fall of the Berlin Wall. It is a thriller of sorts, but that description simply does not do justice to a film that is so much more than that.

The central plot concerns the investigation by means of covert surveillance of a playwright and his actress girlfriend, both of whom, on the surface, appear to be loyal to the state. The surveillance, ordered by a government bigwig, is carried out by a captain in the East German security service, the Stasi.

The captain is an inscrutable, emotionally repressed and lonely figure who appears to have no hobbies and no love life (the latter being a gap that he attempts to remedy by the occasional use of prostitutes) and who lives for his work.

However, as his scrutiny of the playwright and his girlfriend develops his sympathy for them and the plight of people in their position increases and he begins to question the motives of the state and what he is doing on its behalf.

The film gives a chillingly authentic insight into the interrogation techniques of the Stasi, of the repressive nature of life in an East Germany in which the security service had 100,000 employees and 200,000 informants and into the atmosphere of nervousness and paranoia that seemed to pervade everything.

But it also examines the stresses and strains on those whose job it was to carry out the state's wishes, some of whom will have harboured doubts about the system their actions were supporting. The acting and the direction are excellent, as is the script.

This is a compelling film, which is in German with English subtitles. 10/10.