The Lives of Others

Holy Fuck.

I don't say that a lot. I try to to swear excessively. Not out of any sense of personal responsibility; I'm just a firm believer that overusing expletives will cause them to become less effective when they are truly necessary to make a point. So believe me when I plead for you to watch The Lives of Others immediately, if not sooner.

I'm a bit late to the party, I know. The movie was released in the U.S. almost a year ago; the Coolidge Corner Theater, which I mostly swear by for movie recommendations, played it for several months. It won the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film in 2006. It should have won the Oscar for Best Film Ever Made, Ever, In the History of the Universe.

It's a drama/thriller about a couple in East Germany in the mid-1980s and the secret police agent who has been assigned to spy on them. In the process of listening to their conversations, arguments, and intimate moments, the agent becomes unintentionally intertwined in their lives without their knowledge. Although he is a patriotic man who believes wholeheartedly in the Communist values of the German Democratic Republic, he must also grapple with the reality of a government that fails to live up to its own ideals.

As the best movies are, this film is about human relationships, especially the nature of compassion and betrayal when a person's most unguarded moments are placed in another's trust. The story--at times suspenseful, funny, and tragic--could have been treated in a very sappy and melodramatic way. But restraint is what makes the movie great. The actors are masters of understated emotion; the script is minimal and relies on meaningful silences, visual storytelling, and a haunting original score that is actually central to the story. The artistry of the movie is achieved by a delicate layering of plot elements until they come to a shattering climax. The final twist is unexpected, yet it fits so perfectly you will find yourself wondering why you were unable to predict it.

Aside from the awesomeness of the acting, screenplay, and direction, this movie also provoked some thought on a personal level. It's a historical drama, yet it's set in my lifetime, and I know almost nothing about the reality of the Stasi in East Germany. The facts of political oppression of Communist regimes in Europe never really permeated my generation's consciousness. I remember when the Berlin wall came down, it was a cause for celebration for adults, but it didn't mean that much to me. All I knew was that we had to change the maps, and they sold pieces of the wall in little cardboard boxes in K-Mart. Yet the subject is so fresh in German minds that the film was quite controversial when it was produced in Germany. I hate to harp on the sad state of historical and political awareness on the part of Americans, but I'm glad when a story like this calls attention to aspects of our own history that have been forgotten, ignored, or just plain avoided.