Review: The Lives of Others [Fact or Fiction?]

December 3, 2007 in Article
Tags: best foreign film, lives of others, masterpeice, movie, review

For those of you who are unaware, “The Lives Of Others” (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0405094/) is a film which was made by Florian Henchel von Donnersmarck in 2006. It focuses on the horrifying system of observation in the former East Germany in the 1980’s. It is about a successful dramatist, Georg Dreyman, and his partner, Christa-Maria Sieland, who is an upcoming stage actress. A powerful minister, played by Thomas Thieme, becomes interested in Christa and asks that the young couple be followed by the Stasi.

For a brief background, the “Stasi” was the East German secret police; it came into existence in 1950 after being established by the government of the German Democratic Republic (GDR) in an effort to curb the legitimacy crisis and the growing amount of discontent within the general populace in East Germany. Originally it was a small organisation but after the protests held by disgruntled workers on June 16th, 17^th and 18^th which spread across the GDR like wildfire and ended in some 50 deaths and the arrests of over 10,000 people, the GDR pushed for a rapid expansion of the Stasi in order to be able to maintain control of the public, whose grievances were growing rapidly. From this point onwards the Stasi grew rapidly and in its peak, it managed to keep an astonishing 6 million people under surveillance and had infiltrated all areas of East German society. Many people point to the similarities between the Stasi and the Nazi Gestapo of world war two.

The Lives of Others is the first film of it’s kind in the sense that it shows the dark past of the GDR and also looks upon the GDR without nostalgia or ironic humour, this has never been done before in a film and even in this instance where it is the most realistic portrayal of life in the GDR. It has received criticism for being too dramatic and not realistic enough.

The Stasi agent which the film focuses on, who is played brilliantly by actor Ulrich Mühe, provides us with a chilling look into the arts of the Secret Police. He is not portrayed as an individual, but as a symbol for the whole system, where people did everything they were told to do. The most frightening aspect of the film is the banality of it all, the offices are bleak and people speak about secret operations and the bugging of peoples homes with insistent causality. The men approach their jobs with such normality that it makes the film ever more chilling. Von Donnersmarck has gilded history in his bid to create an uplifting narrative in which an old-fashioned notion of decency eventually prevails. Nonetheless, his portrayal of Stasi-era East Germany is chilling in its detail. He shows just how the state police set about breaking a suspect: question him relentlessly and deny him sleep; a formula that has clearly been exhaustively tested. An innocent prisoner will shout and rage, but a guilty one will calmly repeat his pre-prepared lies. Threaten to imprison his wife and put his kids into state care - then he’ll talk. The Stasi are portrayed as master craftsmen: they know just how to wire up an apartment and where to place bugs. They use odour samples from their suspects, have dogs specially trained to sniff out fear, and have their own pseudo-scientific means of classification. The film is also alert to the Kafkaesque absurdity of everyday life in the GDR, where there are so many spies that there is almost no one left to be spied on. The director relishes showing the tension and intimidation that contaminate society. With this film we gain a glimpse of how it must have been for citizens of the GDR, to live with constant oppression of their free will and opinion.

This brings me to the question of whether it can be looked upon as a historically accurate representation of life within the GDR. I feel it soft-pedals the oppressiveness of the German Democratic Republic, Anna Funder, the author of Stasiland, wrote in a review of the movie that it was not possible for a Stasi operative to have hidden so much information from his superiors because Stasi employees themselves were watched and operated in teams, seldom if ever working alone. She noted that in the “Director’s statement”, Donnersmarck wrote, “More than anything else, The Lives of Others is a human drama about the ability of human beings to do the right thing, no matter how far they have gone down the wrong path.” To which Funder has replied: “This is an uplifting thought. But what is more likely to save us from going down the wrong path again is recognising how human beings can be trained and forced into faceless systems of oppression, in which conscience is extinguished.” I feel that this emphasises the fact that the film, albeit an amazing achievement, cannot be looked upon as a historically accurate account of the Stasi in East Germany. It is the most realistic film so far to demonstrate the horrors of the Stasi, but what is truly frightening is the fact that people who lived through this time of oppression do not feel that the true terror of which the Stasi were capable has been accurately portrayed.

I feel the film does deserve its public and critical acclaim, it is a superb piece of film, an astonishing achievement, but its narrative is fantasy, it could not have taken place, and according to Anna Funder, never did take place under the GDR dictatorship. These objections are somewhat beside the point, the point being that this is a film, and it uses the syntax and conventions of Hollywood to convey to the widest possible audience some part of the truth about life under the Stasi, and the larger truths that experience revealed about human nature. It mixes some historical fact with the ingredients of a fast paced thriller and love story.