You know how sometimes very worthy movies escape your notice? Well not so much escape your notice but sit out there, taunting you to watch them. You load them up on the hard drive and just never seem to find the time to sit down and watch them.
The Lives of Others is one such movie for me. I downloaded it onto one of my downloading machines months ago.. maybe even as much as year ago. Then downloaded it again on another machine, determined to watch it.
I finally did and, boy, is it something. While this shouldn’t come as any surprise, what with its Foreign Language Oscar from a couple years ago, I was still struck by just how good it was. One of the best films I’ve seen in awhile.
Set in the last half decade of communist East Germany (the GDR), it follows one of the countless surveillance investigations run by the country’s secret police, the Stasi. After nearly 40 years of power, it no longer has to depend on physical intimidation to maintain control. It’s social repression through blacklisting and ostrasization. Everyone except for the hopelessly naďve assume they’re being watched and wiretapped and conduct their lives accordingly.
But a moral rot has set in on the system. A surveillance officer (a German Kevin Spacey) realizes this and puts his career on the line in an attempt to save an unwitting writer from falling prey to spiteful state appartchiks who now operate solely out of personal interest rather than a belief in their government. An ironically rare act of selflessness that reveals the hollow core of supposedly socialist Soviet satellite.
While certainly no laugher, The Lives of Others is surprisingly uplifting. It is quietly shot and beautifully acted. Stop procrastinating and see it. An absolute gem of a flick.
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