“People don’t change,” snorts the swinish government minister Herr Hempf (Thieme) at the beginning of Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck’s thrilling Oscar-winning debut. For much of this compelling film, he would appear to be correct. As The Lives Of Others opens, it’s 1984 in the former GDR. Orwell himself, however, could not have envisaged the mechanisms of this particular Big Brother state a mere five years before the fall of the Berlin Wall.
By now, the Ministerium für Staatssicherheit, the state security service more commonly known as the Stasi, employ more than one hundred thousand operatives. Almost twice as many East German citizens are unofficial informants. Even political jokes are written into a notebook. The absurd paranoia of the Stalinist police state manifests itself in Kafkaesque loops. During a two-day interrogation, Stasi officer Wiesler (the remarkable Mühe), informs a broken detainee that not knowing one’s crime is, in itself, a crime.
Similarly skewed thinking underlies the decision to spy on playwright Georg Dreyman (Koch). A dashing pro-GDR artist who still manages to retain the respect of his peers, Dreyman, together with his beautiful muse and lead actress Christa-Maria (Gedeck), seem like a poster-couple for the state. As Wiesler points out, however, the ‘only non-subversive writer we have’ must be suspicious because he is above suspicion.
This suits the repugnant Herr Hempf rather nicely, for he harbours lecherous designs on Christa-Maria, whom he declares “loveliest pearl of the GDR.” Wiesler and his crack team immediately descend on Dreyman’s apartment armed with bugs and surveillance equipment. The hard-assed Stasi agent even moves into the attic above the ‘suspect’ premises.
But then something odd happens. Like Bruno Ganz’s angel in Wings Of Desire, Wiesler, perched in his own lofty vantage point, suddenly wants to be as human as his thoroughly decent subject. His desire to be a good German in a most inhuman system becomes the central dilemma of the film. And to do the right thing without getting caught, some serious ingenuity is required.
Beautifully performed and compellingly paced, The Lives Of Others is never less than engrossing. Unfolding like a freak show for the very best and worst of humanity, the ridiculously precocious director (debuting here at age 33) has fashioned historical grievances and iniquities into a modern classic. It’s The Conversation with added soul.