New movie review
This may seem like blog filler. You're probably right, but here it is anyway. My latest review for film criticism class is about the German nominee for the best foriegn film Oscar. Next week: Puccini for Beginners, a silly, lightweight lesbian romantic comedy that I thought was funny and enjoyable, but everyone else in class *hated*. Enjoy.
***
Captain Wiesler's emotionless mask of a face seemingly tells us everything we need to know. As yet another suspected subversive is brought before him, the East German State Security officer coolly prepares to inflict the inevitable hours of psychological torture that will follow. The young man pleads that he has done nothing wrong, but Wiesler tells him, entirely without irony, that "if you believe we arrest people on a whim, that alone is enough to justify your arrest."
The Lives of Others, the feature debut of German director Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, introduces its main character in bravura fashion. The questioning of the young man is intercut with a lecture Wiesler (Ulrich Muhe) gives at a college, using audiotape of the suspect's whimpering collapse to illustrate proper interrogation technique. When one man in the classroom complains that what is being done is "inhuman," Wiesler discreetly puts a damning mark next to the student's name.
Quite simply, Wiesler appears to be more machine than man, the living embodiment of the declared goal of the State Security Ministry, or Stasi: "To know everything." Yet Muhe's expertly textured performance shows that life in a all-powerful police state can take a profound toll on those in power, as well the people they control.
Set (perhaps not coincidentally) in 1984, the film masterfully recreates the fear and oppression that pervaded life in Communist East Germany. No one is exempt from suspicion and widespread wiretapping means that no one's life is really their own. Bloated, corrupt bureaucrats divide their time between squelching every individual freedom and denying that any such thing could happen in their worker's paradise. Even scenes that don't deal directly with state control still carry a dark air of lurking menace, reinforced by the bleak grey winter setting.
The evocatively titled The Lives of Others follows Wiesler as he is reassigned from the interrogation chamber to a surveillance mission directed at playwright Georg Dreyman (Sebastian Koch) and his beautiful actress girlfriend Christa-Marie Sieland (Martina Gedeck). Although Dreyman is outwardly supportive of the regime (he’s hailed as "our only non-subversive writer" by one Party official), his association with a blacklisted director makes him suspect.
Once agents enter Dreyman's apartment and, in a chilling, wordless sequence filled with dramatic swells of music, bugs every square inch of it, Wiesler's job is to listen to everything the couple does and says every hour of the day.
At first, Wiesler’s cold stare betrays nothing of his thoughts as he sits wearing headphones and listening to the minutiae of everyday life (although the lingering shots confirm that Muhe bears an uncanny resemblance to Kevin Spacey). But soon, two things become clear that challenge his convictions.
Dreyman is indeed engaged in “subversive” activities -- he is secretly writing an article for a West German magazine about the East’s appalling rate of suicide, which claimed his blacklisted friend. But at the same time, Wiesler realizes that he has come to care for his quarry far more than he expected. The exact moment when Wiesler makes the shift from the couple’s unseen tormentor to their equally invisible protector is so subtle as to be almost imperceptible. But after that, there is no going back.
Ensconced in his surveillance post, Wiesler repeatedly puts his own neck on the line to help Dreyman and Sieland avoid suspicion, all without them ever knowing who he is, or that they are under surveillance. Even with expert help from the inside, however, the tentacles of the police state prove difficult to escape.
The film belongs to Muhe, who conveys Wiesler’s utter transformation from heartless party functionary to stalwart force for good with only minimal dialogue, using his eyes and expression to tell the story. On paper, such a drastic change in character may ring false and unbelievable, but Muhe pulls it off with aplomb.
As Dreyman, a thoroughly decent man caught in impossible circumstances, Koch provides an genial moral center for the film, managing not to be beaten down by oppressive forces until they become overpowering.
Gedeck has the difficult role Christa-Maria, who alternates between heartbreaking loyalty to Dreyman and self-destructive fear of the government. The strength of her performance is evident in a late scene where Christa-Marie is given a choice between doing the right thing and saving herself. The audience knows she could go either way, and her consideration of the question is agonizing.
Henckel von Donnersmarck’s direction skillfully maintains suspense throughout the 2 hour and 20 minute film by emphasizing the potential threat to the characters from several angles. We worry first that Dreyman will be turned in by Wiesler for subversion, then that Wiesler will be found out for helping Dreyman, then that the whole scheme will collapse under its own weight.
When there’s endless danger, there are endless opportunities for drama, and even if some of the characters and subplots in the middle of the film feel extraneous, they don’t distract from the story, which ends satisfyingly with a coda set after the fall of the Berlin Wall.
According to a May 2006 story in the Boston Globe, the fictional film caused a political commotion in Germany when it was released. Up to that point, the Stasi surveillance and the totalitarian Communist regime had almost never been publicly discussed in the country before that, either in popular culture or politics.
“It's forbidden by law to deny the crimes of the Nazis,” German historian Hubertus Knabe says in the article. “But it's almost forbidden by custom since reunification to really discuss the crimes of the regime that turned East Germany into a prison."
The Lives of Others was credited with opening a dialogue and counteracting a movemen by former Stasi officers who had been trying to rehabilitate their image, claiming that everything they did was to protect the country from its enemies. The film was a box-office success in Germany, won seven German Film Awards, and now has a chance to add an Oscar, as one of this year’s very deserving nominees for best foreign language film.
***
Captain Wiesler's emotionless mask of a face seemingly tells us everything we need to know. As yet another suspected subversive is brought before him, the East German State Security officer coolly prepares to inflict the inevitable hours of psychological torture that will follow. The young man pleads that he has done nothing wrong, but Wiesler tells him, entirely without irony, that "if you believe we arrest people on a whim, that alone is enough to justify your arrest."
The Lives of Others, the feature debut of German director Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, introduces its main character in bravura fashion. The questioning of the young man is intercut with a lecture Wiesler (Ulrich Muhe) gives at a college, using audiotape of the suspect's whimpering collapse to illustrate proper interrogation technique. When one man in the classroom complains that what is being done is "inhuman," Wiesler discreetly puts a damning mark next to the student's name.
Quite simply, Wiesler appears to be more machine than man, the living embodiment of the declared goal of the State Security Ministry, or Stasi: "To know everything." Yet Muhe's expertly textured performance shows that life in a all-powerful police state can take a profound toll on those in power, as well the people they control.
Set (perhaps not coincidentally) in 1984, the film masterfully recreates the fear and oppression that pervaded life in Communist East Germany. No one is exempt from suspicion and widespread wiretapping means that no one's life is really their own. Bloated, corrupt bureaucrats divide their time between squelching every individual freedom and denying that any such thing could happen in their worker's paradise. Even scenes that don't deal directly with state control still carry a dark air of lurking menace, reinforced by the bleak grey winter setting.
The evocatively titled The Lives of Others follows Wiesler as he is reassigned from the interrogation chamber to a surveillance mission directed at playwright Georg Dreyman (Sebastian Koch) and his beautiful actress girlfriend Christa-Marie Sieland (Martina Gedeck). Although Dreyman is outwardly supportive of the regime (he’s hailed as "our only non-subversive writer" by one Party official), his association with a blacklisted director makes him suspect.
Once agents enter Dreyman's apartment and, in a chilling, wordless sequence filled with dramatic swells of music, bugs every square inch of it, Wiesler's job is to listen to everything the couple does and says every hour of the day.
At first, Wiesler’s cold stare betrays nothing of his thoughts as he sits wearing headphones and listening to the minutiae of everyday life (although the lingering shots confirm that Muhe bears an uncanny resemblance to Kevin Spacey). But soon, two things become clear that challenge his convictions.
Dreyman is indeed engaged in “subversive” activities -- he is secretly writing an article for a West German magazine about the East’s appalling rate of suicide, which claimed his blacklisted friend. But at the same time, Wiesler realizes that he has come to care for his quarry far more than he expected. The exact moment when Wiesler makes the shift from the couple’s unseen tormentor to their equally invisible protector is so subtle as to be almost imperceptible. But after that, there is no going back.
Ensconced in his surveillance post, Wiesler repeatedly puts his own neck on the line to help Dreyman and Sieland avoid suspicion, all without them ever knowing who he is, or that they are under surveillance. Even with expert help from the inside, however, the tentacles of the police state prove difficult to escape.
The film belongs to Muhe, who conveys Wiesler’s utter transformation from heartless party functionary to stalwart force for good with only minimal dialogue, using his eyes and expression to tell the story. On paper, such a drastic change in character may ring false and unbelievable, but Muhe pulls it off with aplomb.
As Dreyman, a thoroughly decent man caught in impossible circumstances, Koch provides an genial moral center for the film, managing not to be beaten down by oppressive forces until they become overpowering.
Gedeck has the difficult role Christa-Maria, who alternates between heartbreaking loyalty to Dreyman and self-destructive fear of the government. The strength of her performance is evident in a late scene where Christa-Marie is given a choice between doing the right thing and saving herself. The audience knows she could go either way, and her consideration of the question is agonizing.
Henckel von Donnersmarck’s direction skillfully maintains suspense throughout the 2 hour and 20 minute film by emphasizing the potential threat to the characters from several angles. We worry first that Dreyman will be turned in by Wiesler for subversion, then that Wiesler will be found out for helping Dreyman, then that the whole scheme will collapse under its own weight.
When there’s endless danger, there are endless opportunities for drama, and even if some of the characters and subplots in the middle of the film feel extraneous, they don’t distract from the story, which ends satisfyingly with a coda set after the fall of the Berlin Wall.
According to a May 2006 story in the Boston Globe, the fictional film caused a political commotion in Germany when it was released. Up to that point, the Stasi surveillance and the totalitarian Communist regime had almost never been publicly discussed in the country before that, either in popular culture or politics.
“It's forbidden by law to deny the crimes of the Nazis,” German historian Hubertus Knabe says in the article. “But it's almost forbidden by custom since reunification to really discuss the crimes of the regime that turned East Germany into a prison."
The Lives of Others was credited with opening a dialogue and counteracting a movemen by former Stasi officers who had been trying to rehabilitate their image, claiming that everything they did was to protect the country from its enemies. The film was a box-office success in Germany, won seven German Film Awards, and now has a chance to add an Oscar, as one of this year’s very deserving nominees for best foreign language film.
posted by Ryan Davis | 3:12 PM
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