The Lives Of Others
(German, with English subtitles)

Director: Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck

'The Lives Of Others', written and directed by first-timer Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, transports you to a place you wish all films would, and so few do: a window on lives separate from yours in time and place and events, and yet so deeply connected that you can feel their heartbeats.

It's set in 1984, in East Germany, and Big Brother is studiously watching. Captain Gerd Weisler, codenamed HGW XX/7, (Ulriche Muehe) is an expert interrogator, who believes in what he does, even if it means keeping a suspect awake for over 40 hours to get at the truth. Individuals, even card-carrying party officials, are always under suspicion. And if you are bohemian playwright Georg Dreyman (Sebastian Koch) with stunning actress girlfriend Christa-Maria Sealand (Martina Gedeck), you are guilty until proven innocent.

The secret interplay between the committed Stasi official, and the two lovers, whom he watches over, hour after hour, day after day, without their knowledge, and where it leads the characters, is tense and suspenseful : you do not know what will happen next. It captures with a chilling authenticity the paranoia people lived under, on the other side of what used to be called the Iron Curtain.

Without being a spoiler, we can safely tell you that the Berlin Wall comes down towards the end; the film notes it as quietly but as effectively as it unspools the rest of the proceedings. And as Weisler discovers his real self, layer by layer, we are in the presence of a masterful performance, powerful, yet subtle: it tells you what it is like to be human.

This beautifully sub-titled film got the best foreign film Oscar in 2007: it should have got the best film.

shubhra.gupta@gmail.com

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