Das Leben der Anderen (2006)Director: Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck
Starring: Ulrich Mühe, Sebastian Kock, Martina Gedeck, Ulrich Tukur
For the final week of the semester in Screens, Images, Ideas we watched the film that I had been most looking forward to seeing, von Donnersmarck's Oscar winning The Lives of Others.
In the East Berlin in 1984 (an appropriate year given the film's themes), Stassi Captain Gerd Wiesler (Mühe) begins a surveillance operation on playwright Georg Dreyman (Kock). Dreyman is the only playwright in East Germany who is read in the West who remains loyal to the GDR, but his artistic, intellectual lifestyle and choice of company arouse suspicion. Wiesler's surveillance finds nothing suspicious, but he grows more and more intrigued by Dreyman. When Wiesler discovers that the reason the Minister for Culture is so keen on finding something to pin on Dreyman is that he is secretly having an affair with Dreyman's partner, for the first time in his long and decorated career as a Stassi officer he becomes conflicted.
The Lives of Others is not an anti-communist film. A less restrained film, and ultimately less interesting film, would have had our heroes being noble East Germans fighting against the oppressiveness of socialism with victory coming through the falling of the Berlin Wall. However in von Donnersmarck's film the two characters who we empathise with the most, the Stasi officer Wiesler and the playwright Dreyman, are in fact the two most devoted socialists in the film, and remain that way to the end. Their character evolution does not see them changing their perspective on socialism. In both cases their dissatisfaction is with the way that socialism has been executed in the GDR and it is this devotion to socialism which inspires both of them to rebel against the state in their different ways.
The restraint of this film can also be seen in the fact that the Berlin Wall barely features. This is a film about the GDR. It is not a film about the Berlin Wall and thus we never see footage of the wall, with the exception of some footage of it falling which is largely to establish where we now find ourselves in the chronology of the story, and there is only one short scene in which a mock plot to cross the wall is discussed. The film is about life in East Germany, largely dealing with characters who feel they belong there. So it is not about life in East Germany in relation to life in West Germany. It is not life in East Germany longingly looking to the West, dreaming of a better life, so the Berlin Wall as a barrier, both physical and symbolic, need not feature with any prominence.
What really makes the film is the recreation of the GDR. Through their cinematography, use of location and set design, von Donnersmarck and his team do an amazing job of establishing the sense of stifling oppression in the country. Von Donnersmarck and his design team looked at hours of footage and photographs of the old GDR. Through this they came up with a colour palate for the film. They identified that in this material the colour green appeared more than the colour blue, and orange appeared more than red. So von Donnersmarck and his set designer Silke Buhr chose to completely remove reds and blues from their set design. What resulted was a hyper-reality, a look which was realer than real. When we remember things, the prominent details become more prominent and those details which were insignificant disappear completely. Thus this hyper-real colour design created a GDR which really clicked with a lot of people's memory of that era.
Ulrich Mühe, who sadly died only a year after the film came out, puts in a great performance as Wiesler. He truly believes in his calling as a Stassi officer to be "the sword and shield" of the GDR. There are a great deal of similarities between him and another famous cinematic surveillance expert, Gene Hackman's Harry Caul in The Conversation. Not only do they look amazingly similar, the lack of visible emotion and the overwhelming lack of trust in those around them is also similar.
Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, who has to have the longest name I've ever come across for a director, has just released his second feature film and has gone in a rather different direction. He has backed up his Oscar winning debut (it won Best Foreign Film) by directing The Tourist with Angelina Jolie and Johnny Depp. It's the one which looks like roughly the same premise as Tom Cruise and Cameron Diaz's Knight and Day but a bit less corny and a bit classier. Like I said, a slightly different direction, but when someone has only made two films you can't really say that something is in or out of character. He could just be a diverse guy.
The Lives of Others is a fascinating and brilliantly executed film about an amazing period of history, a period that is all the more amazing considering how recent it was. It is a bit slow at times, but never enough for you to lose interest, and has a very touching and satisfying conclusion.
In the East Berlin in 1984 (an appropriate year given the film's themes), Stassi Captain Gerd Wiesler (Mühe) begins a surveillance operation on playwright Georg Dreyman (Kock). Dreyman is the only playwright in East Germany who is read in the West who remains loyal to the GDR, but his artistic, intellectual lifestyle and choice of company arouse suspicion. Wiesler's surveillance finds nothing suspicious, but he grows more and more intrigued by Dreyman. When Wiesler discovers that the reason the Minister for Culture is so keen on finding something to pin on Dreyman is that he is secretly having an affair with Dreyman's partner, for the first time in his long and decorated career as a Stassi officer he becomes conflicted.
The Lives of Others is not an anti-communist film. A less restrained film, and ultimately less interesting film, would have had our heroes being noble East Germans fighting against the oppressiveness of socialism with victory coming through the falling of the Berlin Wall. However in von Donnersmarck's film the two characters who we empathise with the most, the Stasi officer Wiesler and the playwright Dreyman, are in fact the two most devoted socialists in the film, and remain that way to the end. Their character evolution does not see them changing their perspective on socialism. In both cases their dissatisfaction is with the way that socialism has been executed in the GDR and it is this devotion to socialism which inspires both of them to rebel against the state in their different ways.
The restraint of this film can also be seen in the fact that the Berlin Wall barely features. This is a film about the GDR. It is not a film about the Berlin Wall and thus we never see footage of the wall, with the exception of some footage of it falling which is largely to establish where we now find ourselves in the chronology of the story, and there is only one short scene in which a mock plot to cross the wall is discussed. The film is about life in East Germany, largely dealing with characters who feel they belong there. So it is not about life in East Germany in relation to life in West Germany. It is not life in East Germany longingly looking to the West, dreaming of a better life, so the Berlin Wall as a barrier, both physical and symbolic, need not feature with any prominence.
What really makes the film is the recreation of the GDR. Through their cinematography, use of location and set design, von Donnersmarck and his team do an amazing job of establishing the sense of stifling oppression in the country. Von Donnersmarck and his design team looked at hours of footage and photographs of the old GDR. Through this they came up with a colour palate for the film. They identified that in this material the colour green appeared more than the colour blue, and orange appeared more than red. So von Donnersmarck and his set designer Silke Buhr chose to completely remove reds and blues from their set design. What resulted was a hyper-reality, a look which was realer than real. When we remember things, the prominent details become more prominent and those details which were insignificant disappear completely. Thus this hyper-real colour design created a GDR which really clicked with a lot of people's memory of that era.
Ulrich Mühe, who sadly died only a year after the film came out, puts in a great performance as Wiesler. He truly believes in his calling as a Stassi officer to be "the sword and shield" of the GDR. There are a great deal of similarities between him and another famous cinematic surveillance expert, Gene Hackman's Harry Caul in The Conversation. Not only do they look amazingly similar, the lack of visible emotion and the overwhelming lack of trust in those around them is also similar.
Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, who has to have the longest name I've ever come across for a director, has just released his second feature film and has gone in a rather different direction. He has backed up his Oscar winning debut (it won Best Foreign Film) by directing The Tourist with Angelina Jolie and Johnny Depp. It's the one which looks like roughly the same premise as Tom Cruise and Cameron Diaz's Knight and Day but a bit less corny and a bit classier. Like I said, a slightly different direction, but when someone has only made two films you can't really say that something is in or out of character. He could just be a diverse guy.
The Lives of Others is a fascinating and brilliantly executed film about an amazing period of history, a period that is all the more amazing considering how recent it was. It is a bit slow at times, but never enough for you to lose interest, and has a very touching and satisfying conclusion.
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