Film: Das Leben der Anderen
Director: Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck
Country: Germany
Released: March 2006
Runtime: 137 minutes
Genre: Drama
Studio: Wiedemann & Berg Filmproduktion
Influenced: Oliver Hirschbiegel, Christian Petzold, Wolfgang Becker, Michael Haneke, Maren Ade
What an extraordinary film this is, one of the best scripted and acted movies of the 21st century. Set in East Berlin in 1984, during the height of the German Democratic Republic's (GDR) oppressive regime, Das Leben der Anderen (The Lives of Others) follows the story of a Stasi (East German secret police) officer named Gerd Wiesler (Ulrich Mühe), who is assigned to spy on a playwright named Georg Dreyman (Sebastian Koch). As director Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck makes clear in the film's introduction, the Stasi had 100,000 employees and 200,000 informers at the peak of its surveillance operation, out of a population of around 16mn. Though the film is set in 1984, the director has said any association with Orwell's famous novel is just a coincidence. The director conducted extensive research, including interviews with former Stasi agents and their victims, to create an authentic portrayal of life under the GDR. Mühe, one of Germany's finest actors, drew on his own experience of life under Stasi rule, including the discovery when he later gained access to his files that his own wife was informing on him.
This betrayal is mirrored in the plot of Das Leben der Anderen when we see how pressure exerted by the Stasi on the playwright's girlfriend, the actress Christa-Maria Sieland (Martina Gedeck), leads her to name him as the author of an exposé of covered-up GDR suicide rates. The film explores the psychological and emotional toll of living under constant surveillance and the unexpected human connections that can emerge even in a repressive environment. As Gerd listens in on the lives of Georg and Christa-Maria, he becomes increasingly sympathetic to their plight and questions the morality of the oppressive state apparatus he serves. We start to see a transition in Gerd, an opening up, not just in terms of literature and culture, but also sexually, when he spends time with a prostitute. In one scene, we see him reading Bertolt Brecht's poem, Remembrances of Marie A, on the couch after stealing Georg's book from his apartment. I also love the scene in the lift with the small boy, when we see Gerd's outlook start to soften and shift.
The psychological intensity of the movie is largely thanks to the quality of the acting. As well as Mühe, Koch and Gedeck, other great stage & screen actors from Germany star in the film, including Thomas Thieme (as Minister Bruno Hempf) and Ulrich Tukur (as Oberstleutnant Anton Grubitz). The director also makes great use of extras in the film, such as Hempf's menacing sidekick, but perhaps his greatest achievement was persuading the likes of Mühe and composer Gabriel Yared to come on board for the project despite its very modest budget. This was especially impressive given it was the director's debut feature, so inevitably required a great deal of perseverance on his part. Near the end of the movie, the fall of the Berlin Wall is announced on the radio by the voice of the director himself. Before we get to the powerful and emotional final scene, however, there are several false endings, including one which was filmed in the actual Stasi archives.
Das Leben der Anderen received widespread critical acclaim and numerous awards, including the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film, the BAFTA Award for Best Film Not in the English Language and the
Golden Globe Award for Best Foreign Language Film. Mühe's performance as Gerd also earned him numerous awards, including the Best Actor award at the 2006 European Film Awards and the Silver Bear for Best Actor at the Berlin International Film Festival. While the compelling narrative, exceptional performances and moving score are the main strengths of the movie, the director also deserves plaudits for its visual style, involving a colour palette of greys, greens and yellows, with very little use of blue or red. The production design is also superb throughout, including the use of actual Stasi recording equipment. Some of the shots are particularly innovative too, notably the beautiful sequence that starts with Gerd confronting Christa-Maria in the café, before he returns to his listening post to read the surveillance notes of his colleague, which we see displayed on the screen overlaid with footage of Christa-Maria and Georg making love. Theirs is a tragic, powerful story of romance under authoritarianism.
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