Lives of Others, The

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Members of Congress voting this week on a new wiretapping bill that would allow "intercepting" communications between foreigners might want to watch this 2006 Oscar winner for Best Foreign Film. In "The Lives of Others," the year is 1984 and George Orwell's Big Brother is casting one heckuva big shadow across East Germany (GDR), where the Stasi (secret police) have decided that the only way to really catch dissidents is to spy on everyone. That includes loyalist writer Georg Dreyman (Sebastian Koch), who, until recently, had been immune from the routine wiretapping.

Just as there are two kinds of people in a capitalist system--the haves and have-nots--there are two kinds in a police state: those in power who spy and bully, and those who have no recourse but to be victims in such a society--or else defect. None of that is on Dreyman's mind, as he truly seems to be a supporter of the socialist state. But all it takes is one man with a motive to change things, and that happens here in this intelligent drama.

The rotund Minister of Culture Bruno Hempf (Thomas Thieme) has been using his power to coerce Dreyman's girlfriend into having sex with him . . . if she ever wants to work as an actress again. She feels as if she has no choice, because these guys can end your career just as quickly as they can end your life. Case in point? Dreyman's favorite director, who has been blacklisted and depressed since being unable to pursue his life's work. Except you can't say "blacklisted" in 1984 East Berlin, because, as one of the Stasi tells him, a humanistic system wouldn't do such a thing.

"The Lives of Others" essentially gives us a glimpse into the lives of two separate groups: Obersleutnant Anton Grubitz (Ulrich Tukur) and his Stasi friend Hauptmann Gerd Wiesler (Ulrich Mühe), who leaves a teaching post at the Stasi academy to be the principle eavesdropper on Dreyman, and the writer and his circle of friends. Alternating back and forth helps move the plot forward when the pacing, as is often the case with European films, can seem leisurely. Don't confuse "leisurely" with "boring," though, because writer-director Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck does a fine job of focusing our attentions on the personal dilemmas each character faces, and the short but significant journey that each makes.

The most interesting character isn't Dreyman. Rather, it's the man who's made it his mission to spy on him and "get the goods on him." But something happens along the way to make him sympathetic to the writer, and that complicates his own life. Likewise, as Christina-Maria (Martina Gedeck) becomes more entangled in a double life, she's faced with a crucial decision, just as Dreyman must come to terms with his support of a system that forces so many of his friends into secrecy, defection, or early "retirement." To his credit, the director allows the characters and their situations, and the back-and-forth structure, to create a natural tension. He doesn't employ any harsh camera techniques that would take us out of the story, and his segues are so smooth that we begin to feel how closely the hunter and the hunted are connected. That "The Lives of Others" was filmed in Berlin only adds to the realism that seems organic to the screenplay.

"Don't I need him?" Christina-Maria says, when her boyfriend begs her not to go to her corpulent liaison. "Don't I need this whole system? They decide who is to play." And, who is to pay. In less capable hands, I could see a film like this piling up more rants than a multiple-car collision on the freeway, but Von Donnersmarck does a fine job of dealing with politics and subversion without resorting to polemics or didactic dialectics. Anything political remains on the level of observation or an extension of a personal crisis, and that keeps the focus on the characters. And to have us care about the hunter as well as the prey is certainly an achievement.

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