The Lives of Others (Das Leben der Anderen)

Director Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck

THE LIVES OF OTHERS (Das Leben der Anderen)                       A                    

Germany  (137 mi)  2006 d:  Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck

A brilliantly realized depiction of the East German Stasi secret police, set in the mid 1980’s when they were in full swing, casting their net of surveillance over the entire nation, sadistically turning neighbor against neighbor, all under the thumb of an information hungry police state, where all choices were impossible, where for an entire nation there was no option, as failure to cooperate with the authorities usually meant dire consequences.  This is a revival of Kieslowski’s behind the iron curtain cinema of moral anxiety, and in many ways parallels his 1988 film, A SHORT FILM ABOUT LOVE (1988), as in this case, instead of an ordinary citizen spying on his attractive neighbor, it is one of the highest Stasi agents bugging the home apartment of one of the country’s leading playwrights, a man who flaunts western attire, interests, books and other periodicals, also having a demure leading actress as his girlfriend, so the police can only conclude he’s up to no good.  In both cases, the voyeur becomes intoxicated with the subject, so much so that they act in a way that might otherwise be considered insane, as it’s beyond logic or reason, and might even be considered an act of love. 

Ulrich Mühe, a man who was in real life married to a Stasi informer, who understands all too well what it feels like to live under constant police surveillance, plays Captain Gerd Wiesler, an Alec Guinness look-alike from DR. ZHIVAGO (1965), an unassuming man of quiet intelligence, a Party advocate who rarely speaks, but continually jots down what he sees in a small pocket notebook, the eyes and ears of the State.  At each level above him are more despicable men, men enthralled with and corrupted by their own power, men who hold themselves above the laws of the nation, who would rather intimidate the entire population into blind obedience.  Their systematic infiltration of the population is legendary, their interrogations ruthless, operating with 100,000 full-time employees, 200,000 informers, forcing each citizen to capitulate to the police one interrogation at a time.  In the opening sequence, Wiesler demonstrates how he wears down his subjects, offering them no sleep, coldly and calculatingly waiting them out until their resistance is broken, then threatening their family or loved ones with arrest until they confess.  Sebastian Koch is the East German playwright Georg Dreyman, “the only non-subversive playwright we have,” while Martina Gedeck is exquisite in the role of his girl friend, the nation’s leading actress, Christa-Maria Sieland, “the loveliest pearl of the G.D.R,” who unfortunately has an addiction to popping illegal pills.  The head of the Stasi is forcing Christa to submit to weekly sessions of sex in exchange for allowing her to work, an artistic practice that is completely controlled by the State.  It is their apartment that Wiesler bugs, sitting and listening and typing his reports on everything he hears.

Dreyman is connected to a community of other artists, many of whom have already defected to the West, which is the government’s greatest fear, which is why they keep such close tabs on them.  Many have already been interrogated and imprisoned, leaving them with a bitter taste in their mouths, while others have been blacklisted and out of work for as long as a decade.  The Stasi’s method is to imprison them indefinitely, but long enough so that they voluntarily never again contribute anything else in their chosen field.  What Wiesler discovers, however, is that these artists are hiding nothing, exhibiting a rare openness in a society that thrives on secrets and covering up, discovering instead that it is his own superiors who have the suspect motives, which puts him in the same impossible position as the people he is spying on.  This turns into a series of calculated risks, where each side realizes they’re being watched, but they have to decide how to act.  When a blacklisted director who hasn’t worked in ten years finally hangs himself, Dreyman and Wiesler simultaneously commit to more drastic actions, beautifully rendered in a musical sequence where Dreyman plays a piece of piano music given to him by the director called “Sonata for a Good Man,” a piece written by the film’s musical composer, Gabriel Yared, which has a significant impact on Wiesler, who begins to identify with “the lives of others,” omitting significant details in his reports, as it’s hard for him to believe his government didn’t drive that man to the breaking point.  Dreyman at one point is heard asking how anyone who has listened to this music, really listened to it, could ever think of it as anything bad.  On several occasions Wiesler nearly blows his cover, one is a beautifully designed sequence in a bar which is one of the turning points in the film, as without ever coming out and actually saying so, he subtly persuades Christa to re-examine her weekly sessions with the Stasi superior, where she inquires into his motives, as he seems to know so much about her, questioning if he is a “good man?” 

Beautifully written, mixing meticulous detail with intelligence and humor, where the tone and pacing of the film are perfectly matched, where the music does not overreach, yet is genuinely in synch with the mood of the film, where the ensemble cast is flawless, and where the urgency of the story starts to feel overwhelmingly personal after awhile.  There’s another scene nearer the end where Christa is arrested and subject to interrogation, a scene of indescribable conflict and tension, where she identifies her interrogator as a friend from an earlier moment in the film, yet cannot reveal anything, where the interrogator himself is under observation, so both are placed in an impossible dilemma.  This poignantly describes living under the thumb of relentless totalitarian psychological pressure, eloquently described in his book as The Captive Mind by Polish Nobel prize laureate Czeslaw Milosz, and the film never for a minute wavers in this regard, filled with small moments that are as revealing as the larger ones, which include a not so incidental reference to Communist Party Premiere Gorbachev, a man who simply walked away from a position of unlimited power, and a man who incidentally changed the entire culture of living under an authoritarian police state, and in doing so, changed the course of possibilities for others.  It’s a powerful work for a first time filmmaker who also wrote the film, whose recollections include his mother being searched by the secret police as a young boy, which may help explain the dramatic impact this film reaches by the end, stunningly understated, yet precisely to the point.

Barbara

BARBARA                              B                     

Germany  (105 mi)  2012  d:  Christian Petzold             Official site [Germany]

No other movie about East Germany in the past 20 years (including the Oscar-winning “The Lives of Others”) has touched me, a former East German, as much as this one. It vividly brought back memories and emotions I had long forgotten. Everything is just so in this film, nothing exaggerated or glorified. In a convincing unhurried way, Mr Petzold has caught the spirit and atmosphere of the time. Each gesture, each tableau, from the hospital equipment and apartment furnishings to the smallest accessory, such as a folkloristic Bulgarian ashtray (something no East German household could be without) is rendered just right. Spiritually, too, the film airs the values that many East Germans feel have got lost in the more opulent, materialist world of a unified Germany. It is a fine homage to ordinary people living in extraordinary times.

—excerpt from The Economist, May 10, 2012,  New film: "Barbara": Ordinary people at extraordinary times 

Winner of the Silver Bear award for Best Director at Berlin 2012, Petzold has created perhaps his most conventional film, though initially resorting to the most uncompromising means, turning vaguely compromising only at the end, which feels somewhat disappointing.  Within this über repressive East German society on the edge of the Baltic Sea in 1980, the film stays completely under the surface for nearly the entire film, where feelings are a liability that can only get you into trouble, where everyone is under suspicion, often visited and scrutinized by the Stasi secret police, which means apartments searched and citizens subject to a thoroughly humiliating body cavity inspection, so the entire society exists as a kind of ghost world.  As seen through the eyes of a single character who is in nearly every frame of the film, Nina Hoss as the title character plays a disgraced citizen recently released from interrogation, where her crime was apparently requesting an exit visa, exiled to a small rural village where a somewhat dilapidated apartment has been assigned to her, also a job working as a physician at a local hospital, where everyone has been prepped by the Stasi for her arrival, particularly her boss André (Ronald Zehrfeld), the lead physician.  Barbara plays her role with such a subdued nature, her eyes downturned, never showing any sign of interest, completely guarded as if every living soul is spying on her.  Every neighbor and coworker has ulterior motives, as is every car parked outside, or every ring of the doorbell becomes a continuing sign of oppression, as it’s never a welcome visitor.  In terms of a character study, it’s reminiscent of Andrei Zvyagintsev’s Elena (2011), the subjugation of an older woman living in Moscow that feels equally suffocating, though in that film it’s all about the capitalist power of economics.  Still existing in the socialist era, neighbors spy on neighbors, where even your own lover could fall under suspicion, but there is no wealth whatsoever on display, instead children are sent to forced labor camps.

This is another minimalist film told with a certain rhythm and precision, with little information obtained through dialogue, as all normal channels of communication are blocked, buried beneath the surface, so instead it’s a film about body language, brief glances, furtive looks, inquisitive eyes, or stares, where Barbara is continually viewed as someone that has something to hide.  By following her routines even as no one is watching her, she does seem to have a secret life, riding her bike much of the time, often veering into the deep of the woods, obviously trying to avoid detection.  Often she is punished by the police simply for avoiding their watchful eyes when they cannot account for her actions.  While it feels like she is literally being run into the ground by incessant hounding, she never seems to have a moment of peace.  But in this society, that’s ordinary and what’s to be expected.  What’s unusual is for someone to care as much as Barbara does about the idea of freedom, where she’s already tasted it, lived it apparently, as she’s cultured and refined, one of the few doctors that actually listens to her patients, and away from the microscopic lens of the Stasi, she actually exhibits kindness to her patients, reading regularly to one of her young female adolescents, a story about riding down the Mississippi River on a raft from Huckleberry Finn, enjoying the air of being free, out from under the reach of an abusive father that cages and beats his own son.  The symbolism for freedom is not lost on the audience.  While the picture of life behind the Iron Curtain is one of mental captivity, where the State is always trying to capture and possess what’s in your mind, citizens find ways to elude the police, to tell them little or nothing, which is another way of not telling them anything at all.  While Barbara doesn’t exactly fit in, where all around her, everyone views her as a political subversive, André is continually supportive and helpful, attempting to make her life a little less miserable, which only makes her more suspicious of his motives.  

Petzold exudes formal restraint, exercising a Kieslowski Eastern European style cinema of moral anxiety, never allowing emotions to rise to the surface, showing a bleak world where life isn’t lived so much as barely tolerated, where nobody likes living under a police state, but most get used to the inevitability that people close to them are informers, as the Stasi claimed nearly a quarter of a million informers, most all of them ordinary citizens.  When Barbara ventures outdoors on her bike, it’s a sunless world draped in layers of grey, where the wind is always howling and it feels like storms are continually approaching.  Nature itself feels untamed and hostile as humans attempt to navigate their way through the dark.  Few clues are offered here, as it’s a barebones story with little to go on, where much of it is following the doctors as they make their rounds through the hospital, yet throughout, one feels like Barbara is resisting this everpresent weight on her back simply by not joining in, by adamantly refusing to go along with this repressive regime.  In a moment when she lets her guard down, she admits, “It's impossible to be happy here.”  Unlike THE LIVES OF OTHERS (2006), winner of the Best Foreign Language Film that told a similar story from the point of view of a conflicted Stasi officer, this reveals the everyday rhythms of the same subjugated society through the life of an ordinary citizen.  While the film gets many of the details right and dramatically reflects a downbeat and subservient society, it doesn’t expose the behind-the-scenes operations of the Stasi that THE LIVES OF OTHERS reveals or the profoundly effective interrogation techniques used to browbeat information out of people.  Instead BARBARA creates an atmospheric recreation of a toxic cloud hanging over East Germany, a time when people were choking on the fumes of a failed political regime that resorted to terrorizing their own citizens.  The more restricted people are from obtaining freedom, the more significant it ultimately becomes in their lives.  While Barbara seems frenetically driven to escape rather than remain a rat in a cage, some may find her end game baffling, as her outlook changes from dire, life and death circumstances where she’s literally gasping on her last breath from each insufferable moment to something else altogether, something unique in the human spirit. 

Unknown

UNKNOWN                          C+

USA  Great Britain  Germany  France  Canada  Japan  (113 mi)  2011  ‘Scope  d:  Jaume Collet-Serra

The film opens with a rush of energy that surprisingly gets you into the thick of the action right away, where Liam Neeson gets separated from his wife at a posh Berlin hotel once he realizes he left an important briefcase behind at the airport, heading back in a taxi without even letting her know.  Out of cell phone range and in a traffic jam, an impatient Neeson urges the driver to take alternative methods, sending a jolt of energy through the audience when the taxi spins out of control and heads over a bridge into the icy waters of the River Spree, where the driver (Diane Kruger) ingeniously manages to free herself and rescue her unconscious passenger before disappearing anonymously into the crowded city streets.  4 days later, Neeson awakes from a coma in a hospital, still forgetful of details but desperately needing to find his wife (January Jones), though she’s left no word that she’s looking for him.  When he bolts from the hospital to attend an international pharmaceutical convention at the upscale hotel where he was expected to deliver a speech, his wife doesn’t recognize him and another man (Aidan Quinn) has assumed his identity as her husband.  Leaving him the odd man out, none of this makes sense, yet he has no way of explaining who he is with little money and no identification, and even Google searches for his name and position have been replaced by photos of Quinn.  Who is this guy, and why all of a sudden does he suspect men are following him? 

This relatively young Spanish director does have an energetic flourish with speed and pace, accentuating the desperate straits of a man who has had his identity stolen from him, yet still has the smarts to pursue all the missing angles he can find, where a nurse at the hospital slips him the name of an underground former East German Stasi figure (Bruno Ganz) who has a way of finding people.  Ganz is terrific in the role and is easily the man of interest in this movie, as his home is lined with old Army photos and a wall filled with commendations.  He adds a well needed coherent literacy to the script about a man who is living in a muddled state of confusion.  When Neeson tracks down the taxi driver, who reluctantly agrees to help despite being an illegal Serbian worker who relentlessly avoids the cops, the paranoid mood escalates when two contract killers arrive unexpectedly at her doorstep which leads to a thrilling sequence where Neeson and the girl have to fight their way out of certain death.  At this point, the two are linked, where despite not knowing why they’ve been targeted, they are in the thick of it, followed immediately by a hair-raising car chase sequence right through the middle of Berlin’s crowded downtown streets, past historical relics such as the Victory Column and the Brandenberg Gate that leaves nothing but panic and destruction in their wake. 

Like Jason Bourne from THE BOURNE IDENTITY (2002 – 2007) trilogy, Neeson continually has flashbacks, which are the only clues to his previous existence, reminders of a life he once knew, and the film is thrilling while Neeson attempts to make sense out of who he is, as Ganz pushes unorthodox secret buttons behind the scenes, but becomes all too predictable once he figures it out, where it’s literally handed to him on a platter of belated clues and explanations that really undermine the whole fun of the picture.  When it eventually comes down to just good guys against bad guys, that’s a whole lot less interesting than a throwback to the Cold War era style film presented in shattered pieces with fragmented images and delusional thoughts about a missing identity, where Neeson is constantly besieged by threats against his life while also trying to put together the missing mosaic of his apparently stolen life.  By the time Frank Langella arrives on the scene, the ending is deflated and all too contrived, like letting the air out of a balloon, but there’s plenty of fun while Neeson’s life is in turmoil, also excellent use of shots in the snow as well as ice flowing in the river.  Perhaps the thrill factor for the audience might never have diminished had the character been left “unknown” and in the dark, which also leaves open the possibility of a sequel, a concept the director has already embraced.