The Lives of Others

2006 movie

Rating: 17/20

Plot: A guy named Gerd, an agent for East Germany's secret police, is assigned a job to listen to the goings-on of a playwright and his actress girlfriend, but he does a terrible job.

I was going to give a lot of credit to the main actor in this, Ulrich Muhe, for how emotional the performance manages to be while he gets very few lines. But then there's another actor in this, Volkmar Kleinert, who plays another writer named Jerska (unfortunate name, isn't it?), and that character is so powerfully sad. And bald. So I started wondering if there's just something about old bad Europeans. But seriously, Muhe is really really good. It's hard for me sometimes to know whether or not a performance in a foreign movie is any good or not, but there's something really powerful about the controlled and quiet that guy's performance is. There's only one scene where you could say he's really making acting happen, a scene that really sold me on the guy actually when he starts crying while listening to a piece of music. The bald head, his expressionless countenance, and the clinical way he goes about his job can't entirely conceal that he's developing something for the titular others, and it's just perfect how all that is developed, right up to a very non-Hollywood ending and then another ending that brought a tear to my eye. Of course, you can't have a thriller with this much paranoiac characters (as Cobain sang, "Just because you're paranoid, doesn't mean they're not after you.") and surreptitious happenings without a lot of suspense, and this delivers there, too. I was intrigued watching them set up the apartment. The movie had either almost no music or a barely discernible score up to that point, but that scene was scored almost like a Hitchcock movie which I thought was effective. I also liked the dramatic irony with the playwright's neighbor tying a tie for him and being able to keep a secret. But these are the kinds of thrills that don't put you on the edge of your seat as much as they just make you really sad. You're not sure exactly how it's all going to be resolved, but you just know it's not the type of situation where things are going to be resolved in a way that is going to make you happy. Still, loved watching this one, a story about characters exercising free will in an oppressive society. That those characters' motivations and decisions could be argued long after the credits roll is a testament to how powerful the characters and the storytelling really is.

Cory recommended this.