The Lives of Others (2006)

A Stasi trainer, Captain Gerd Wiesler (Ulrich Mühe), is ordered to place a famous play writer Georg Dreyman (Sebastian Koch) and his girlfriend Christa-Maria Sieland (Martina Gedeck) under constant surveillance. The orders come from the highest echelons of the government, but Wiesler slowly begins to understand that the motives for them may not be as patriotic as they should. And at the same time the life of these two content souls begins to lure him in.Despite this film being just over a decade old, it feels much older. And in this case that works in the film's favour, giving it an authentic feel, like it could have happened right there and then. it gives the film weight, which is good, because Stasi and their human right violations are some of the darkest aspects of East German history. And yet, at the same time the film tries to shy away from black and white moralizing. Wiesler's character, despite being a high-ranking Stasi officer, is not a monster, does posses a soul and certainly has his sympathetic moments. This has apparently caused certain amount of controversy, some believing that Stasi and its legacy should be shown no mercy, no sympathy. Which seems uncomfortably harsh to me.Then again, I was only a few months old when the Berlin Wall came down. For me, this is history, something that happened in the distant past. It's funny for me to think that the events of this film took place when my parents were teenagers or young adults. The world has certainly changed since then.For me this film is more interesting than it is good. Certainly it's acted well and directing is superb, but it still seems more like a gateway into a subject, a conversation starter, rather than a great movie in its own right.

This movie was surreal. It wasn't just a movie but an experience, both thrilling and beautiful. One of those movies i will remember for life.

"Your missing this film means you necessarily did not live another human dimension of life". That's my simple suggestion,if expected,when it comes to this film.This probably is one of the films directed from first to last minute with the highest degree of intelligence and consciousness a human being can afford or perhaps have ever attempted to exercise. It's worth almost of fifty other films combined and you will feel that glint of humanity that is sublime,instinctive yet here is in distress and being challenged in such an overwhelming way that has only to be felt,ever represented in a film perhaps in the whole of film history.It can test one's breaking points,shake one's core principles that one snuggles deep inside.It teaches what humanity is with grueling and sometimes deeply undermining a test.It can break and penetrate one,it can lacerate one,it can consume one if one believes himself to be a human and;even if he doesn't believe himself to be human,this film will recommend that,that disbelief or desensitization is artificial and imposed thus is not inherently human and can afford to let a man be wavered.It is capable of stirring one's human feelings irrespective of the extent of exposure,hardening to inhumanity one has been or can be imagined to have been subjected to.

In the stifling atmosphere of communism where even the most private thoughts are read every seconds, a Stasi official named Weiseler weighs his humanitarian feeling over his duty to the government and learns the meaning of love , sacrifice etc. This movie called "The Lives of Others" shows us that life is impossible to understand or judge unless looked at it from its own point. The movie's first opening scene shows us Weiseler's unwavering loyalty towards the party and he suspects Georg Dreyman, a writer, of sedition when he is thought to be an ideal citizen by many others. Henceforth a secret operation is ordered by the minister of culture at Dreyman's house with Weiseler in charge of it. From that point he starts to intervene in the lives of Dreyman and his girlfriend Chirsta Maria Seiland and gets to know every personal thing in their lives. He eventually comes to know that the cultural minister is nothing but a competitor of Dreyman and misuses his power to get Christa. When he comes to know that the communist party head (the cultural minister) behaves like a bourgeois and moulds the communist rules according to his whims and fancies, his loyalty which was entirely directed towards the government becomes divided and he empathizes with the lives of Dreyman and Christa Maria Seiland. He becomes a soft- hearted man and tries to save them at every possible opportunity. He does not report that Dreyman has written an article about the movie director, Jerska's death which is prohibited by the law. He also removes the typewriter from under the door sill which would have been a concrete proof that Dreyman is anti-national and he would have punished or killed. After a few years, the communist regime breaks up and he no longer is a stasi official, but a commoner. I liked the last part when he goes to the bookstore to buy a book by Georg Dreyman and the owner asks "Should I pack it?" He tells "No, It is for me." which has double meanings. One is that he bought the book for himself, another is that the book was written by Dreyman about him, the Stasi official who saved his life.