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The Lives of Others (original German: Das Leben der Anderen) is a German film, marking the feature film debut of writer and director Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck.

With The Lives of Others, von Donnersmarck won the 2007 Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. The film had earlier won seven Deutscher Filmpreis awards – including best film, best director, best screenplay, best actor, and best supporting actor – after having set a new record with 11 nominations. It was nominated for Best Foreign Language Film at the 64th Golden Globe Awards.

Contents 1 Overview 2 Wiesler turning point The lives of others Sonata for a good man Sonate vom guten Menschen 3 Plot 4 Notes and references 5 External links 5.1 Reviews

[edit] Overview

The thriller/drama involves the monitoring of the cultural scene of East Berlin by agents of the Stasi, the GDR's secret police. It stars Ulrich Mühe as Stasi Captain Gerd Wiesler, Ulrich Tukur as his chief Anton Grubitz, Sebastian Koch as the playwright Georg Dreyman, and Martina Gedeck as Dreyman's lover, a prominent actress named Christa-Maria Sieland.

The film was released in Germany on March 23, 2006. At the same time, the screenplay was published by Suhrkamp Verlag. Donnersmarck and Ulrich Mühe were successfully sued for libel for an interview in which Mühe asserted that his former wife informed on him while they were East German citizens^[1] through the six years of their marriage.^[2] In the film's publicity material, Donnersmarck says that Mühe's former wife denied the claims, although 254 pages' worth of government records detailed her activities.^[3]

The organizers of the Berlin Film Festival refused to accept it as an official entry in 2006.^[1] The film succeeded in Germany despite a widespread contemporary reluctance in the country, particularly in its films,^[1] to confront the totalitarian excesses of the East German state.^[2]

The Lives of Others cost US$2 million^[1] and grossed more than $74 million worldwide as of November 2007.^[4] Prior to his death, Sydney Pollack was said to be directing a possible Hollywood remake.^[5]

[edit] Wiesler turning point The lives of others Sonata for a good man Sonate vom guten Menschen

[edit] Plot

In the East Germany (GDR) of 1984, Stasi Hauptmann (Captain) Gerd Wiesler (code name: HGW XX/7), a member of the Stasi apparatus and a true believer in the socialist regime, is shown interrogating a prisoner suspected of knowing who helped an acquaintance defect to the West. The scene of the interrogation is intercut with another in which Wiesler plays an audio recording of the interrogation while lecturing to a class on Stasi methods. One of the students in the class objects that the sleep deprivation used on the prisoner is "inhumane", but Wiesler replies that it is necessary (he also puts a little cross next to the student's name in his notes, presumably judging him to be potentially unreliable). He claims that an innocent man will become enraged at the injustice, while a guilty one will know he is there for a reason and will become quiet and perhaps cry. The prisoner is then shown weeping. Wiesler then points out the prisoner has given the same version of his story repeatedly in exactly the same words, which Wiesler claims is what tells the difference between lies and honesty; someone telling the truth could, and would, tell his story in different ways, whereas a liar has prepared sentences and rehearsed them - and falls back on them when under pressure. Eventually the prisoner provides a name.

Wiesler's old classmate, now his superior, Lt. Colonel Grubitz, assigns him to spy on playwright Georg Dreyman, who, Wiesler is told, is suspected of pro-Western sympathies. Stasi agents secretly enter Dreyman's apartment in order to install small microphones in the light switches and electric sockets. Wiesler and his assistant Udo then monitor activity in the apartment from the attic space above, typing a summary record of all events and conversations after each shift.

Wiesler soon finds out that the real reason Dreyman is being spied on is that a minister named Hempf, a member of the Party's Central Committee, is interested in Dreyman's girlfriend, actress Christa-Maria Sieland. If evidence is found to arrest Dreyman, the minister will have free rein. This discovery greatly damages Wiesler's motivation, as he realizes the minister is abusing his power primarily to be rid of a rival, and Dreyman is an easy target for security forces because of his association in intellectual circles.

Christa-Maria Sieland lives with Dreyman but secretly sees Hempf against her will (for instance, while walking back to Dreyman's apartment, he offers her a lift in his car and, during the trip, fondles her breasts and forces her to kiss him). Presumably, the actress relies on Hempf to get illegal drugs. Wiesler secretly intervenes so that Dreyman will discover the relationship between Christa-Maria and the party member. A week later, when she is about to go to another rendezvous with Hempf, Dreyman confronts her with knowledge of her liaisons. Christa-Maria defensively claims they are both in effect in bed with the regime, in order to be allowed to continue their careers as artists; Dreyman persists, saying she is a great artist who doesn't need to sell herself, but in the end she leaves. Wiesler then sees her at a bar, and insinuates that her talent is great enough that she doesn't have to give herself to Hempf. Although at first it seems that Christa-Maria will carry out her rendezvous with Hempf, Wiesler later learns from his underling Udo that Christa-Maria instead returned to Dreyman after her encounter in the bar with him, although Udo is unaware of the implications of this information.

Dreyman is a supporter of the regime, or at least its principles, but he feels the way dissidents are treated is wrong. He quietly stands up for his friends if he feels that they have been unfairly treated. One friend, Jerska, is a director who has lost his reason to live after being blacklisted. At Dreyman's 40th birthday party, Jerska gives Dreyman a gift of sheet music to a piece titled "Sonata for A Good Man" (German: Sonate vom guten Menschen). Shortly afterward, Jerska commits suicide; this finally spurs Dreyman into speaking out publicly against the regime. Dreyman arranges through friends with West Germany's weekly magazine Der Spiegel to anonymously publish an article on suicide rates in the GDR. While the GDR publishes detailed statistics on many things, it has not published any information on suicide rates since the 1970s, presumably because they are embarrassingly high. Because all typewriters are registered, Dreyman uses a typewriter smuggled from the west with a red ribbon to write the article, which he hides under the floor in his apartment. Before Dreyman and his friends discuss sensitive issues in Dreyman's apartment they test whether it is bugged: they pretend that someone will be smuggled in a relative's car over to the West. Later they conclude that the apartment is not bugged, because the car is not searched. Unbeknown to the group, it was only Wiesler's compassion that prevented their plan from exposing their surveillance. Wiesler had called the border guards but changed his mind and hung up without saying anything, telling himself, "Just this once."

Wiesler feels grief when not even a hired prostitute has time for him as she merely moves on to her next "appointment."

As Wiesler's empathy for the writer and his girlfriend has grown over time, he lies in his reports to protect Dreyman. Also, at his proposal, the hours of surveillance are reduced, so that it is no longer continuous and he no longer has to share the work with his more objective assistant. Eventually, Dreyman and his friends finish the article and it is published, upsetting the East German government.

Meanwhile, the minister, angered that Christa-Maria has chosen to no longer see him, orders Wiesler's superior, Anton Grubitz, to find some way to destroy her and tells him that she has been illegally buying prescription drugs. Grubitz and his men manage to catch her red-handed in the act of purchasing these drugs and she is arrested. Terrified, she turns Dreyman in, although she does not reveal the location of the typewriter. The house is searched for contraband by security officials, but by chance they miss the typewriter hidden under the floorboards. Wiesler is called in to interrogate Christa-Maria. At this point, Grubitz begins to suspect Wiesler's newfound pity and implies that, even though they are longtime friends, a failure to perform his work will be very costly. Wiesler interrogates Christa-Maria (with his boss watching through the two-way mirror) with the same flawlessness and objectivity that characterized him for years. She breaks down and tells him where the typewriter is hidden. Wiesler, however, still determined to protect a couple he has come to care for, travels to their apartment in advance of the Stasi search team, removes the typewriter from Dreyman's hiding place and hides it in his car.

During a second search, in the presence of Christa-Maria, when the hiding place of the typewriter is about to be opened, Christa-Maria leaves in shame and runs into the street and deliberately throws herself in front of a truck. The secret hiding place is opened, but is found empty as she does this. A helpless Wiesler, who is watching the events just outside the apartment, tries to tell Christa that he has the typewriter, but can't complete his words. Dreyman arrives at the scene and Christa-Maria dies in the weeping Dreyman's arms. As a result the surveillance operation becomes pointless: Wiesler's superior calls it off but, distrusting Wiesler, lives up to his words and demotes him. The newspaper lying in the front seat of Wiesler's car announces that Gorbachev is the new Party Secretary of the Soviet Union. Wiesler is demoted to Department M, to tediously steam-open letters all day with no chance for promotion until he retires. Four years and seven months later, Wiesler is in the middle of opening letters when a co-worker with a radio notifies him of the fall of the Berlin Wall. Upon hearing the news, Wiesler and his co-workers walk out on the job.

At the end of the film, after German reunification, Dreyman encounters the former minister at the playhouse and asks why his apartment was never bugged. The minister, now a successful businessman, ironically details the scope of Dreyman's extensive surveillance, telling him where to look for the equipment. Dreyman finds the wires and becomes perplexed why he was never caught. The Stasi's archives are now open to the public; he goes there and reads the massive pile of files the Stasi had of him, and learns the truth. While agent "HGW XX/7" (Hauptmann Gerd Wiesler 20/7) must have heard Dreyman and his friends conducting anti-regime activities (such as the writing of the suicide article), he did not report those things in his voluminous typed notes, and falsely wrote instead that Dreyman was writing a play on the 40th anniversary of the GDR, a topic the regime would have approved of. Next to the final page of notes is a smudge from the secret typewriter's red ink, proving that it was HGW who removed the typewriter. Dreyman now asks for the identity of "HGW XX/7" and is shown his name and photo. He takes a taxi and watches Wiesler for a few moments, working at his new job delivering newspapers.

Two years later, Dreyman publishes a novel "Sonata for A Good Man" (the name of the sonata given to him by Jerska shortly before Jerska's suicide). Wiesler sees the book advertised in a bookstore, and finds that it is dedicated "To HGW XX/7, with gratitude". He goes to buy the book and, when asked if he wants it gift wrapped, he responds quietly with a double entendre, "No; it's for me..."

[edit] Notes and references

[edit] External links

• US Official website by Sony Pictures Classics
• UK Official website by Lions Gate Entertainment
• Article in the Boston Globe about the film's political impact in Germany
• Interview in indieWIRE with Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck about the film
• NPR interview
• The Evening Class interview
• Movie stills
• The Lives of Others - Learning activities

[edit] Reviews

• Review in Variety
• Review from the BBC
• The New Yorker magazine review
• Review in Subalterncinema.com