HI! Sorry I did miss quite a few movie fridays posts recently. I'll try not to miss any in the future. I had a completely different film lined up for this post, but listening to a wonderful radio program about actor Ulrich Mühe and director Florian Henckel von Donnersmack encounter, really made me change direction. This two people destiny crossing paths, infacts, led to most beautiful and touching film The life of Others (Das Leben der Anderen, 2006) that I wish to recommend with no shade of doubt.
+ The film involves the monitoring of the cultural scene of early 1980's East Berlin by agents of the GDR's secret police, the Stasi.
Successful playwright Georg Dreyman is considered one of the most important intellectuals of the regime, who escaped the interests from the government due to his staunchly pro-Communist views and his internationally recognized talent. One day though the Party's Minister of Culture- who attended one of his performances- falls in love with Georg's partner, the actress Christa-Maria, and therefore decides to ask a Stasi agent to spy the two of them.
++ Wiesler, the agent, soon learns the real reason behind the surveillance and is horrified by the Minister's abuse of power. Through his surveillance, he knows Dreyman and Christa-Maria are deeply in love. Nevertheless Minister Hempf uses his knowledge of the actress' addiction to prescription drugs to engage her in sexual liaisons.
George will found out about their relationship through Wiesler's indirect help, and implore her not to meet him again. She refuses and flees their apartment at first, but later she meets in a nearby bar agent Wiesler, who, posing as a fan, reminds her of her talent. The encounter convinces Christa-Maria to return to Dreyman.
+++ At this point Georg Dreyman is at the same time a dedicated Communist, but also increasingly disillusioned with the way his blacklisted colleagues are treated by the State. When his close friend Albert Jerska, a blacklisted theatre director, gives him the sheet music to a piece titled "Sonata about a Good Man" and shortly afterwards hangs himself, George decides to write with a secret (unregistred) typewriter an article about the concealed East Germany suicide rates, and publish it anonymously in the newspaper.
The Stasi obtain a copy of the typed manuscript and realize it was written on an unregistered typewriter with red ink. Meanwhile, Minister Hempf is livid at being jilted by Christa-Maria and orders the Stazi to destroy her. Arrested as she attempts to buy drugs at her dentist's office and threatened with the end of her career, Christa-Maria reveals Dreyman's authorship of the article. When the Stasi search the apartment, however, they do not find the typewriter.
Gradually, listening to his 'victims' conversations, knowing their thoughts, listening to their music, entering into their lives, the Stasi agent will substitute blind loyalty to the Party with a more dignified loyalty to ideals. Wiesler's heart moves from contempt and envy to compassion.
The situation becomes complicated, as Wiesler is warned by his superiors that failure will cost him and Christa-Maria both. Eventually the actress will recognizes him as the man from the bar and tells him where the typewriter is hidden, agreeing to become an informant, but when the Stasi team return to Dreyman's apartment the typewriter is not under the floor boards, where she told it was. They do not know that Wiesler has already seized the evidence.
His help won't prevent the worse to happen: when she sees the horrified look on Dreyman's face as he realizes she informed on him, ridden with guilt she runs into the street and is struck by an oncoming truck and killed on the spot. Dreyman runs downstairs and holds his dead girlfriend in his arms, weeping inconsolably.
The situation becomes complicated, as Wiesler is warned by his superiors that failure will cost him and Christa-Maria both. Eventually the actress will recognizes him as the man from the bar and tells him where the typewriter is hidden, agreeing to become an informant, but when the Stasi team return to Dreyman's apartment the typewriter is not under the floor boards, where she told it was. They do not know that Wiesler has already seized the evidence.
His help won't prevent the worse to happen: when she sees the horrified look on Dreyman's face as he realizes she informed on him, ridden with guilt she runs into the street and is struck by an oncoming truck and killed on the spot. Dreyman runs downstairs and holds his dead girlfriend in his arms, weeping inconsolably.
++++ Wiesler will be as punishment demoted to four years and seven months of steaming open letters in a dank, windowless office, until the fall of the Berlin Wall, when he finally walks away from his job.
Only years later, looking into the Stasi secret documents, Georg realizes that Agent "HGW XX/7" had knowingly covered up Dreyman's authorship of the suicide article and had removed the typewriter. Moved, he will dedicate him a novel and 2 years later Wiesler himself will buy that book and read on the first page the note "To HGW XX/7, with gratitude".
After the Berlin Wall fall, as it happens in the film, people were allowed to look into Stasi secret files. Unsuspectedly, milions of documents revealed that not only the professionally trained agents but also family members, friends, colleagues were spying on eachother.
Even Ulrich Mühe himself found out things he did not want to know. . As he says, he immagined to be under government control; in facts everyone knew hidden agents were everywhere but somehow that was part of normal life in those days. Less normal for him was to find out about 4 of his colleagues/friends who worked as unofficial Stasi's informants. But the most shocking and painful discovery, was for Mühe to discover that his beloved wife Jenni was on the informants list as well. Although she would never admit it until her death, it was totally heart breaking for Mühe to have to face such a possibility.
I think this gives his performance -actually in a role that is opposite to the one he had in real life- a very special angle and depth.
As he puts it, The life of others' screenplay was to him very realistic and personal as it describes so well the story of a spy and of two artists who were spied, divided, manipulated and betrayed. It was infact also his story.
Interesting to know the film was so well written by a young director with little esperience who actually did never live in eastern Germany, and was just 16 years old when Berlin's wall fell. Amazing work.
When they meet to discuss the opportunity of working together, Ulrich Mühe asks Florian "How can one play the role of a troubled men who sits hours and hours in a solder spying on someone else?" the director simply replies "Maybe one does not have to act it at all".
That was the perfect answer for Ulrich and decided to play the part.
Sadly, Mühe was already seriously ill at the prize-giving ceremony in Los Angeles in February 2007 when Das Leben der Anderen was awarded its Oscar, and flew back to Germany hours later for an urgent stomach operation. He died the same year, on july 22nd.
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