The Lives of Others

Das Leben Der Anderen
Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, 2006, 139 minutes
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Das Leben Der Anderen, or The Lives of Others, tells the story of Hauptmann Gerd Wiesler, an East German Stasi officer. At the film's opening, we see Wiesler interrogating an East German, and then using tapes of this interrogation to teach Stasi students interrogation techniques. When a student asks Wiesler whether sleep deprivation is inhumane, Wiesler scratches a denigrating mark next to the student's name while he explains that an interviewee who repeats his story over and over must be lying. Only with proper technique can the interviewer extract the true story.

Over the course of the film, though, Wiesler transforms from a man who extracts what he wants to hear from his subjects to a man who hears what his subjects have to say. Invited by his boss, Anton Grubitz, to see a play, Wiesler is introduced to the playwright Georg Dreyman and his mistress, the beautiful lead actress Christa-Maria Sieland. Because State Minister Bruno Hempf, Grubitz' boss, wants to have an affair with Sieland, Grubitz initiates a Stasi observation of Dreyman. With Dreyman arrested, the thinking goes, Sieland then would be available exclusively to the Minister. Wiesler, the master of extracting "the truth" is the natural choice for Operation "Laszlo", since Grubnitz needs someone dependable to deliver the incriminating goods and win a plum promotion.

Two problems problems with Grubitz' plan. First, Wiesler begins to see Grubitz' hypocrisy in Stasi's pledge "to protect the state." Grubitz could not be more plain that Operation Laszlo is intended to implicate Dreyman solely for the purpose of winning Grubitz a promotion after the Minister claims the lovely Sieland as his exclusive love interest. Wiesler also observes Grubitz' hypocrisy over lunch at the Stasi cafeteria. Grubitz relishes his table in the managers' section until Wiesler suggests they sit in the proletariat section with the other workers. Then Grubtiz feigns distaste of a joke about the Party Leader, only to follow that joke with another Party Leader joke of his own.

The second problem with Grubitz' plan is that Wiesler's subjects happen to be artists, the kinds of artists who have the horrible habit of telling a truth not necessarily in sync with the State's version of truth. As Wiesler listens to Dreyman and Sieland, he starts to understand their love of each other and passion for their art. He contrasts Dreyman and Seiland's love making with his half-hour with a prostitute, their house full of art and decoration with his stark apartment, their exploration of issues with his determinism.

Grubitz tells Wiesler near the opening that men never change, but Wiesler does. He begans to tell fictional stories in his reports in order to protect the artists whose stories he really has begun to hear. Later in the film, after Wiesler has endured a few too many Stasi put downs from Dreyman via the Stasi spy equipment, Wiesler enters Grubitz' office ready to turn in Dreyman. In a pivotal moment, Grubitz launches into a speech about a wonderful new report that instructs Stasi on how to categorize artists, and then how to treat each category of artist so that he or she will never write or act again. While Grubitz goes on about how he's discovered a formula to change people, Wiesler completes his character change. He crumples the incriminating report on Dreyman he had planned to deliver, and tells Grubitz instead that Operation Laszlo must be scaled back.

The film draws many fine contrasts between the artists and the East German state. Wiesler swipes a bright yellow book by Brecht that Dreyman received on his birthday, and we spy on Wiesler reading a fantastic passage about the Sun and beauty. This contrasts with the lunch scene mentioned above in which the Sun is the center of one of the dark jokes about the Party Leader. In Dreyman's apartment we find Champagne ("the real thing, not that stuff from Russia"), while in the Stasi cafeteria we're treated to gruel and apple juice, only a notch up from the boiled potatoes and ketchup Wiesler serves himself for dinner. Early in the film, we see Dreyman's play set in an East German factory with cartoon-like workers of the authoritarian state. Near the end of the film, we see the same play, but staged after the fall of the Berlin Wall in an elegant presentation with very striking abstract lighting and set.

The lovers' story comes to a screeching halt when Sieland's increasing drug dependence gets the better of her. In the end, she doesn't give in to the Minister's sexual demands, but rather to the drug of the state. Drugs are the way for Sieland to cope with the insanity of authoritarian control, but the price for her drug is complete cooperation with the regime. The drug is the numbing deal society strikes with an authoritarian government: mindless comfort for mindless control.

In East Germany, the films tells us, 200,000 Stasi officers and informants spied on 100,000 citizens. Das Leben Der Anderen speaks to the importance of culture and its role in revealing truth, even in the face of overwhelming authoritarianism. In times of Mission Accomplished and Hugo Chavez, it would be hard to tell a better story about the transformative role of artists in changing society.