Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck’s debut feature was another film that I had watched before. Sony Pictures Classics picked up the US distribution for this film in 2007 and gave it a 7 month run in theaters. After the conclusion of this run, Sony released the film on DVD and Blue-Ray. Finding a DVD copy wasn’t difficult. For the Sony release, a copy was being held at 30 public libraries within a 20 mile radius of where I live. And that was out of a total of 1566 holdings worldwide that were listed on worldcat.org. The film can also be watched on Amazon Prime, or rented out from Facets. If you’re inclined to simply purchase the DVD, that’s also fairly easy to do. I saw copies of this being sold on eBay for as little as two bucks.
But the madness of the world doesn’t stop there. This is the first film in the series to be nominated for a Foreign Language Film Oscar, which it won in 2007. Don’t expect to see too many more of these, as the Oscar submission requirements for that category tend to be rather vague and mysteriously cryptic. I could list dozens of examples where a country’s official submission wouldn’t satisfy the criteria that I’ve developed for this project. Granted films that get even a nomination can gain a sizable presence in the US market and are probably easier to find. My initial plan was to take advantage of what Das Leben der Anderen had accomplished and grab a copy from a nearby library. Unfortunately I plotted this back in the early stages of March 2020, which … turned out to be a bit of a problem. After every library in my area shut down for a then undetermined period of time I wasn’t quite sure what to do. Thankfully my capacity and desire to be a cheap, lazy bastard would save the day. In the midst of one of the worst global pandemics in over a century, I managed to find a full copy of the film’s Buena Vista International release that someone had posted to Veoh. It was posted with English subtitles and I chose to pen a critique based off this. Kids, don’t let anything get in the way of your crazy dreams.
Of all the films that I had watched up to this point in the series, I think this entry contained the most intriguing and well constructed narrative. And it’s not even a case where the story was particularly intricate or complex. The basic premise involved nothing more than employing a Stasi agent to secretly monitor a local East German poet/ playwright, Georg Dreyman, for any sign of dissident behavior that might require government action. From this premise though the film was able to convincingly develop two conflicts. One was that the operation produced little actionable intelligence, a facet that the film devoted little time to. And second, that the agent tasked with leading this project, Gerd Wiesler, became so absorbed with the lives of the people that he watched that he soon sympathized with them and started to produce fabricated reports in order to protect them. The potential consequences that could arise from both conflicts offered the film a great deal of suspense that escalated gradually as the story progressed. There was also a very effective surprise twist, in what was easily the film’s most climatic scene, when Anton Grubitz (Wiesler’s supervisor) found Dreyman’s secret hiding place. The film worked very effectively as a political thriller.
The pace of the story was a little slow and meticulously plotted especially in the early portions of the film, but this actually allowed the film to spend more time with these characters and flesh them out. The character development in the film was excellent. I think what I enjoyed most about this film was its concerted effort to capture the human drama underneath its overt political dynamics. This was the rare political film where the characters were presented as human beings rather than as mere caricatures of certain ideologies. There were complexities to all of the characters that one encountered. The dialogue written for these characters was also excellent in its use of meaningful subtexts or in its subtle, insightful commentary. I also liked the film’s dedication to showing the microscopic details of what life was like under such a regime. You see this in the way Paul Hauser turned up the rock music in his own apartment to drown out the things he didn’t want others to hear. You also get a glimpse of this when Grubitz made a poor attempt at humor in the cafeteria. Only those in power were granted the luxury of laughing at the notion of harsh and brutal punishments for slight offenses. One could also be slightly disturbed at Wiesler’s sharp awareness in spotting Dreyman’s neighbor spying on him through her peephole, as well as the chilling manner in which he threatened her, suggesting that he knew everything about her life and her family. Equally horrifying was the way the typewriter expert could just nonchalantly rattle off the typewriters used by many of the film’s characters as if it were public knowledge.
The film showed the nefarious depths of a world ruled by a government that had an insatiable need for information on its citizens. And at the beginning of the story such a desire had already reached a stage of being an unhealthy obsession. Even the slightest provocation, like a student expressing a certain comment in class, could lead to greater scrutiny. But there was also a need for a certain depth to the information that was solicited. What made the film interesting was that the spying at the heart of the story sought knowledge from within the confines of individual human identity and that those tasked with performing such exploratory ventures were every bit as human as the subjects of such surveillance. In Wiesler’s desire to learn more about Dreyman, does not Dreyman innocuously allow Wiesler to learn more about himself? Did not each man exert an an equal effect on the other, despite never truly meeting?
In the role of Wiesler, Ulrich Mühe did an excellent job in crafting a rather complex portrayal of a character that easily could have been rendered as one-dimensional in the hands of lesser talent. The Wiesler we see in the beginning of the film was a great introduction to the character. He seemed cold, calculating and dispassionate while reviewing one of his past cases; a pure, bloodless bureaucrat who seemed completely unbothered in executing the state’s bidding. And yet Mühe gave Wiesler a modest charisma with the intelligence and confidence that he exuded while discussing his life’s work. Mühe belied Wiesler’s swagger underneath his stoic demeanor. This made Wiesler’s transformation into a man swayed by artistic beauty a bit more believable. Ultimately Mühe had the difficult task of consistently portraying Wiesler’s true persona, which was very reserved, unemotional and downright deadpan, and yet still breathe life and complexity into the character. He achieved this largely through his great skill at subtle, yet expressive physical acting.
Mühe ultimately set the template for all of the film’s performances. Das Leben der Anderen was not a film that offered wild, exuberant performances that effortlessly lit up the screen. The action was careful and meticulously mellow to the point of being rather dull. The acting itself was also remarkably subdued and muted to the degree that it emanated a faux sense of composure that largely masked the internal despair existing within many of its characters. Given the understated dystopian terror in which these characters lived in, I didn’t necessary think of this in a negative light. Even if it made the film difficult to enjoy this particular aspect of the acting felt appropriate. Of course it was the body language, especially the facial reactions of the actors that stood out the most. These were the countenances of people who had been worn down by oppression.
Sebastian Koch as Dreyman was excellent in this capacity and provided the film with most of its emotional intensity, delivered primarily in two important scenes. The first being when he learned of Albert Jerska’s suicide, and the second when he discovered the hidden surveillance apparatus that had been installed in his apartment. Koch’s work in both of these scenes was fantastic. Ulrich Tukur and Thomas Thieme gave solid performances as the film’s primary villains, Grubitz and Bruno Hempf respectively. Granted both largely conformed to the film’s dour tone as established by the other actors. In fact there were only two performances that attempted to break free from the motif of dire despondency, that being Hans-Uwe Bauer as the easily agitated Paul Hauser and Charly Hübner as Udo, who offered the film some misplaced comic relief. I must admit that Martina Gedeck as Christa was the one performance that I really didn’t enjoy as much as I felt I should have. Perhaps in having an actress play a fictional actress, the portrayal was imbibed with too much depth. Christa felt like a chameleon, a person whose identity I couldn’t quite pin down. This is not to say that Gedeck didn’t do a fine job in her two pivotal scenes with Mühe, but even then her performance didn’t quite distinguish itself. It was a good, but rather pedestrian performance. In fairness to Gedeck, in her most important scene with Koch, the camera cut away in the middle of her of speech which diminished its theatrical impact.
This was one of the problems with the film’s cinematographic approach; how to capture all the necessary information between the narrative’s central theater and those tasked with witnessing it within the film. Often the scenes in Dreyman’s apartment had to be cut to show its impact on Wiesler or his assistant Udo. The unique structure of the narrative made it difficult to give any particular character a great deal of focus. And this was the case despite the fact that the cinematographic approach was for the most part restrained and deferential to the acting. The one thing that did stand out for me though was the use of motion within its shots. The film did not settle for a series of droll static shots and intense cutting which made the film seem richer. One of my favorite sequences was the circular pan shot of Mühe as Dreyman played Sonate Vom Guten Menschen on the piano. The movement of the camera enhanced the impact this act had on the character. Wiesler was not seen as someone who was firm and stable in regards to his beliefs about the nature of his work. I also enjoyed the music in the film which was used to great effect to set the tone for the entire story.
Overall this was an exceptional film. With regards to its cinematic artistry, it could be considered a masterpiece. Probably the only real complaint about the film is that it was a work of fiction that does not delve into the true horror of how the Stasi actually operated. Albeit for a film that was produced and released in the 21st century it may contain more insight on contemporary surveillance operations than the ones that occurred in East Germany in 1985. If there’s any wisdom that can be pulled from the film it’s that the effectiveness of such systems are always vulnerable to people of conscience. The United States’ NSA program has repeatedly proven this to be true, through the actions of various whistleblowers like Mark Klein, William Binney, Thomas Drake, and others; men who were able to retain their sense of decency and integrity in the face of horribly corrupt and invasive programs and who were fortunate enough to be able to act upon their instincts.