The Lives of Others

I watched 'The Lives of Others' over Christmas, in the afternoon of a non-descript January day. There was something tangibly atmospheric about the experience, as the grey of our post pseudo-festival intermingled imperceptibly with a the Bakelite miasma of the last days of communist Eastern-Europe. The film makes you uncomfortably aware of the crude machinations of the state against the individual. But in also brings in to stark relief the constant struggle that those whose views are marginalised against a political orthodoxy are involved in. That message is as pertinent in the so-called post-ideological era we currently reside in as it was in the polarised milieu Von Donnersmarc presents.

Captain Gerd Weisler is an eminent Stasi surveillance expert. Such is his prominence that he is responsible for honing the interrogation 'strategies' of the next generation of state-sponsored peeping-Toms. The film documents his fall from this state. As such it is well-worn fictional territory. Weisler's tragic flaw is his humanity, though this is supremely well disguised throughout the film, until it is revealed in the sublime ending (which appropriately takes place in a book shop in post-Glasnost Berlin underneath the glowering facade of 'Stalinallee' the Russian leaders' architectural gift to the Workers). Weisler is set to spy on Georg Dreyman, a playwright who is feted by the regime, but determined to expose the DDR for what it is. Amid the oppressions, suicides and deaths of many of his artist friends, Dreyer manages to smuggle out the truth of the DDR, that it has the highest suicide rate in Europe, into a western magazine. Weisler's ominous, silent, monitoring of the plotting writers forces him to confront and question the principles he is supposed to be defending. In an ending taken directly from Shakespaerian tragedy, Dreyer's vulnerable lover Christa beautifully illustrates the impact states have on the lives of others.

Hagen Bogdansky's cinematography is a joy. The film is a litany of Formica and Bakelite and as such impressively tactile. The light is the perpetual dusk of an unknown season and there's a claustrophobic feeling to all of the shots that's only lifted at the end. The camera rarely moves, so the sense of stasis is tangible too. The characters are physically well-cast; beautiful artists prostituting themselves (literally and figuratively) to gluttonous walrus faced party bosses and apparatchiks. And the depiction of Weisler, rising every morning to posit himself above the plotters where he sits in silent judgement is deeply symbolic.

And the film, ultimately, is about judgement. It's not a crude sideswipe at the failed communist experiment. There's actually an undeniably nostalgic feel to it. This, I think, is laudable because it depicts an era where there was a political dialogue going on. One of "The Lives of Others" many successes is to remind us that debate, agitation and subversion are vital concepts. But it's Weisler's judgements that matter and he becomes the film's motif. Everything that he does is held up to the intense moral scrutiny that only one's own mind can provide. His silent life, his heartbreaking solitude, is pursued faithfully by Von Donnersmarc to the film's uplifting conclusion.

'The Lives of Others' is not a true story. It is not a fable about a state's repentance. It is certainly not an apology for the workings of the Stasi. But it is a thing of beauty; and it is a testament to the power of metaphor that an organ of terror can be presented with such beauty.