The Lives Of Others

Directly after the visual 'excesses' of "Curse Of The Golden Flower", comes a film that couldn't be any more different... Set in 1984 East Germany, "The Lives Of Others" is full of muted browns and greys.

This critically acclaimed political thriller (meaning I won't be able to add anything about the film that you won't already have read), written and directed by Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, beat "Pan's Labyrinth" - one of the films that made my 2006 Top Ten - to the 2007 Best Foreign Film Academy Award. It comments on the extent and methodology of surveillance that the Stasi employed to keep tabs on East Germany's populace during the height of the Communist era. Gerd Wiesler (Ulrich Mühe) is loyal Stasi agent who starts doubting his work when he is ordered to monitor a playwright and actress couple (Sebastian Koch & Martina Gedeck) who are suspected of having Western leanings, but then learns that they are under surveillance because a member of the Party elite is attracted to the actress and wants the playwright out of the way.

I watched this film on a Sunday afternoon, which is usually a disastrous time for me to watch films as I have a tendency to snooze through them. It's testament to the power of "The Lives Of Others" that I was engaged from the start to the end of its over 2 hour long running time, not once did I feel like 'closing my eyes for bit'. The film starts with a chilling classroom scene, where the tutor explains the tricks that can be used to prove a suspect's guilt during interrogation, from that moment I was hooked. I found the film both gripping and moving, this is largely down to Mühe's performance as Wiesler; a man who desperately tries to protect the couple that he is under pressure from his superiors to dig up dirt about.