(Directed by Florian Henckel von Donnersmark)
by Kevin Murphy
This movie is a swift drama with pointed performances; a tense, engrossing plot, important themes and assured direction.
But first…
I want to tell you about my latest health kick. I’ve held off any smoking or drinking; I take daily supplements, exercise and eat right. In the morning I boil two eggs, crack their shells and get my protein. It’s become a mild obsession, a circuitous pact that darts across my brain.
When I’m not obsessing about my newfound health, I think about words. I like words, forming them in my mouth, expressing them with voice and on paper. Today, as I was holding one of my eggs, admiring its oval shape and pale color, I said the word ‘Omnipotent.’ Take a gander at that O and then picture an egg. Not too dissimilar, right? Anyway, if omnipotence can be attributed to the body of an egg, my little health regimen can be attributed to discipline.
And since the film at hand is “The Lives of Others,” discipline and omnipotence must be discussed. Like my regimen, the characters here are taken to task, forced on a daily basis to maintain the rigid determinism necessary for a healthy, rewarding life. On one side, Georg Dreyman, a playwright at the zenith of his powers; on the other, Wiesler, a dutiful, methodical investigator.
Set in East Germany in 1984, Weisler is a Stasi man, one of thousands employed by the GDR, whose intent it is to know everything about the East German proletariat. When Weisler is instructed to investigate Dreyman, the movie sets forth chronicling their disparate, overlapping lives.
Dreyman is handsome, a capable artist content to write and remain nourished by praise. Weisler is quiet, an underappreciated extrapolator of information, resigned to his duties and anonymous existence. While Dreyman’s dreams ring with applause, Weisler’s rush to silence them. Culturally, the men are antithetical. But they share a moral decency that threatens to either destroy or unite them.
The plot is a tight, exquisite experiment that posits Weisler against Dreyman. Weisler bugs Dreyman’s apartment. He reports Dreyman’s actions to his superior, a man anxious to arrest the playwright in hopes of advancing his career. When Dreyman’s girlfriend becomes the target of a lustful commander, the pressure mounts, and Weisler suddenly finds himself at the mercy of two power hungry, eager men. As Weisler continues to spy on Dreyman, he creates an intimate bond, one that is primed all the more as Dreyman remains unaware that he is being watched.
The tactics of the Stasi are portrayed as invasive, powerful, inept and comical. Weisler spends hours wearing earphones, tediously recording every dull occurrence. He becomes a pathetic character, an upright soldier with cold socialist blood, going home each evening to his bare apartment, only to return the next day for more of Dreyman’s life.
In this way, the movie allows Weisler to draw closer to Dreyman. Weisler’s life is sorrowful. Dreyman’s is flush with love and success. It is easy to see why Weisler becomes enmeshed. One night, Weisler listens to Dreyman and his girlfriend lay in bed. Their bodies entwined, they share a comfortable, tender moment. As they drift into sleep, Weisler is shown in his lonely eavesdropping perch, cradling his chair, himself sleeping too, only without the warmth of a partner.
But just as Weisler begins to show his humanistic side, something snaps.
One cold winter day, a dear friend of Dreyman kills himself. The tragedy releases an aggressive verve within Dreyman, and he begins writing an essay disparaging the GDR and their concealment of local suicides. When it is published in the West, the Stasi are furious, and their prior ineptitude is squashed by the rolling drumbeat of violent persecution forced upon the East German people.
Meanwhile, Weisler has become protective of Dreyman. Disillusioned with his superiors’ motives, Weisler has provided erroneous information, and now he too faces suspicion. As the mood grows dire, both Dreyman and Weisler must guide themselves with extreme discipline in order to survive.
At one point, Weisler encounters Dreyman’s girlfriend at a bar. She is a famous stage actor, struggling with an addiction to illegal medication. The Stasi have cornered her so that she has been forced to betray Dreyman. She doesn’t know Weisler, but of course he knows everything about her. In an effort to give her advice without exposing himself for who he is, Weisler tells her to remember her audience. He explains that he, in fact, is her audience.
It’s through such layers of relationships and understanding that Florian Henckel von Donnersmark, this film’s writer and director, grants us, his audience, a form of crushing omnipotence. We have all the information, we know everything about everyone, and in a sense we must determine each individual’s guilt or innocence. We are put to the test, after watching the distasteful methods of the Stasi, to judge soundly, with compassion and insight. We must, however, wait until each character has been completely defined, and this proves difficult, as many of this movie’s characters do things that infect us with a desire to pass judgment quickly.
Donnersmark directs with a fluid pace that rivets and disrupts this film’s always-shifting emotional landscape. He moves from chilling, tense scenes to ones of still beauty, depicting the morbid pallor of the socialist streets as the darkness before the dawn of democracy, convincing his characters and his audience that while things change, change takes a long time, and some of us will not be around to undo what’s already been done.
After learning of his friend’s death, Dreyman plays a sonata on the piano. His girlfriend is there, resting her hands on his shoulders. He pounds the keys, expelling his grief. Weisler eavesdrops. He is enraptured. The two men share a moment, a moment divided by circumstance. Finished, Dreyman asks his girlfriend if anyone who has ever truly listened to such music can be a bad person. The camera captures Weisler in his tortured joy and then moves back to Dreyman. The question, like so many others posed in this movie, remains unanswered. It is a dilemma left for us to answer, the omnipotent ones, the ones holding the egg.
