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The Lives Of Others

(2,316)IMDb 8.42 h 17 min2007X-RayR

This Oscar(r)-winning thriller (Best Foreign Language Film, 2006) tells the erotic story of an East German couple whose every intimate moment is being monitored by the Secret Police hoping to learn information that could destroy their lives.

Directors: Florian Henckel Von Donnersmarck

Starring: Klaus Münster Martina Gedeck Ulrich Muhe

Genres: International Drama Suspense

Subtitles: English [CC]

Audio languages: Deutsch

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Supporting actors: Sebastian Koch Ulrich Tukur

Producers: Quirin Berg Max Wiedemann

Studio: Sony Pictures Classics

Rating: R (Restricted)

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5 star		79%
4 star		12%
3 star		5%
2 star		2%
1 star		3%

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Jill Lefforge

Don't Miss!!

Reviewed in the United States on November 6, 2017

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The Lives of Others
Amazon Video
German with English subtitles

This is one of my all time favorites. Released in 2006, it won an Oscar for Best Foreign Film and with good reason. It’s a first rate story of spies, intrigue, romance and betrayal.

In 1984, the East German Secret Police decide to investigate a famous playwright Georg Dreyman ( Sebastian Koch) and his lover actress Christa-Maria Sieland (Martina Gedeck) for possible subversive activities. The investigator assigned to them, Hauptmann Wiesler (the late Ulrich Muhe) is the definitive “grey man,” a pale, precise bureaucrat who has given his life to his grey country but finds himself intrigued by these dissidents.

What none of them can imagine is how enmeshed their lives will become.

The film richly recreates the look and feel of a waning East Germany.
After my six or seventh viewing, I’m still in awe of writer-director Florian von Donnersmarck’s sly storytelling and subtle characterizations. And the film is loaded with exquisite acting.

Gedeck’s Christa-Maria is filled with cross purposes she struggles to hide, the effects of living in a political system with all checks and no balances. Muhe plays a lonely man surprised by the forbidden. Watching him experience a seismic shift in values is a master class in restraint.

It’s worth the subtitles.

25 people found this helpful

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Eric Mayforth

The Communists Were Mega-Control Freaks

Reviewed in the United States on November 9, 2017

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"The Lives of Others" is set in Communist East Germany in 1984. Georg Dreyman (Sebastian Koch) stars as a playwright who comes under state scrutiny and who smuggles a report embarrassing to the East German regime out of the country.

The report is one describing the high level of suicides in the GDR, and is not surprising considering the ubiquitous attacks described in the film on the dignity of those trapped in East Germany. The Communists conducted ruthless surveillance, employed brutal interrogation techniques, found insidious ways to play people (including family members) against each other to create an atmosphere of constant fear, suspicion, and distrust, and found countless other ways to intimidate East Germans.

One sequence shows someone being interrogated about another person who fled to the West—apparently the obtuse apparatchiks never asked themselves that if Communism was so great, why did so many risk their lives (including Vietnamese and Cubans who fled in non-seaworthy vessels) trying to flee Communist countries.

"The Lives of Others" reveals the extent to which the Communist system forced people to wrestle with their consciences and whether to cooperate with the regime and sell out those close to them or whether to resist and face terrible consequences. The movie has a key character that shows even some members of the Stasi were conflicted, and there is one key glimpse of the extent to which ordinary people knew the East German regime was evil.

Unsurprisingly, even after the Berlin Wall fell, it took some of the characters quite some time to come to terms with some of the psychological aftereffects of living in such a squalid regime, and one of the film's key themes is the loss of hope and purpose that comes from living in such a "society." "The Lives of Others" would certainly give any American a renewed appreciation for the Bill of Rights.

"The Lives of Others" won the Academy Award for best foreign-language film for 2006. The film is in German with English subtitles and is rated R for adult content. It is a moving portrait of what it was really like and a reminder of just how terrible it was to "live" under Communism.

16 people found this helpful

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Norma Vazquez

... movie and after it won an Academy award for Best Foreign film

Reviewed in the United States on May 30, 2015

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After readings a few reviews of this movie and after it won an Academy award for Best Foreign film,I decided to watch it.
It covers a period in the DDR,which was the Eastern part of Berlin occupied by the Russians. The inhabitants lives are constantly under surveilance by the ruthless Stasi apparatus(a spy network). The story centers on an actor/writer,his girlfriend and his friends who are
constantly watched and recorded by the master spy of the Stasi who eventually questions his actions and their consequences on the people he has been orderedd to surveil. What I found absolutely profound is that the actor who portrays the spy, actually lived in the Eastern part of Berlin during this time and after the Berlin wall fell, discovered in the secret files stored on him, discovered to his surprise and dismay,that his wife,and some friends had betrayed him by providing the Stasi information on everything he said and did.
The actor died shortly after making this movie. I recommend this film highly. One has to put up with sub-titles,but it's worth it.
Truly a gripping tale.

31 people found this helpful

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nc2716

Engrossing personal stories in the backdrop of East Berlin

Reviewed in the United States on May 1, 2016

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Engrossing movie of life behind the Iron Curtain in Germany in the early 1980's. It provided eye-opening insight into a socialist culture where people accepted that their words and actions were being watched and judged by secret police and informants, and that they could be pulled in by police for interrogation or imprisonment at any time, for the good of society. Yet the people went on with their lives, until the government over-reach negatively impacted them personally. I especially loved the change in the street activity, store exteriors, clothes, and cars after the Wall came down - a subtle but powerful comparison between socialism and capitalism. Besides this insight into socialism, the story line of the movie was touching and still has me thinking about it several days later. This movie is a must-see for all Millennials who think Socialism is great.

16 people found this helpful

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Dan Rose

Somebody is watching you...Be Afraid

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on June 15, 2017

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This Lives of Others is a brilliant film, it shows how the East German security service commonly known as the Stasi, kept the citizens of the DDR under observation in various ways, for example by bugging apartments, phones and reading the mail of "undesirable" elliments, indeed the East Germans relied on informants, both paid and unpaid to spy on their family, friends and aquaintances and in "The Lives of Others" one of these informants commits suicide by stepping into the path of an on comming truck, fearining that her betrayal would be reveald.

The film is set in 1984, and it's central character, Hauptmann Gerd Wiesler (played by Ulrich Muche) is tasked with the survailance of a disident playwright, Georg Dreyman. The film follows the survailance, including the installation of listening divaces in his apartment and the death of the informant.

I think the Lives of Others is so powerful because it was made by Germans and is in that language throughout (with English subtitles) and it covers a subject with all East Germans can identify. The film, although fiction shows how the state in real life controlled it's population by survailance and other means. I don't think the film would have been as powerful if it was given the "Hollywood Treatment" with a non-German cast or performed in English

14 people found this helpful

Patrician

A Film that Grips from First to Last - Totally Compelling

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on December 31, 2015

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This is a tremendously powerful film, & is now high on my list of favourites. I watched it twice in 48 hrs, & although I was profoundly moved by the first viewing, the second made even more of an impact, revealing nuances I hadnot fully appreciated originally.
Earlier reviewers have praised the film eloquently, noting the superbly taut production values & mesmerising acting of the protagonists, as well as the pernicious logic & attention to detail of the GDR & not least, the small, redeeming moments of human goodness which make it so powerfully moving, so I will not further elaborate on these things.
One thing that struck me: Weisler, the GDR officer at the core of the film, gradually finds his sympathies drawn towards the people he is spying on. But on my second viewing I saw it slightly differently. I believe his reason for suggesting surveillance was not unambivalently that he was suspicious, as he told his superior, but that from the moment he saw them in the theatre he was drawn to them. He has lead a lonely, narrow life, & it seems feasible to me that he experienced the first stirrings of a suppressed recognition or yearning as he gazed at the writer & actor at the end of the play, as they took their encores. He wanted to be them, or be like them.
In effect & to use modern parlance, he began stalking them under the guise of surveillance, & unwittingly found himself more & more involved with them as a consequence.
If you have not yet seen this film I urge you to do so. This is superlative cinema that you won't forget in a hurry.

18 people found this helpful

Legal Vampire

Grey world of Communist East Germany

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on August 22, 2019

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A somewhat sad story set in the grey world of late Communist East Germany, where the security forces ('Stasi') keep watch over the population for unauthorised thoughts and actions through a network of informants, bugging of telephones and apartments and steaming open mail, using technology like tape recorders and clattering typewriters that are now clunkily out of date.

This often mundane reality is a long way from exciting Cold War thrillers set in East Berlin like 'Atomic Blonde', 'The Ipcress File' or 'Funeral in Berlin', although the grey world of 'The Lives of Others' is probably far closer to what most people in East Germany experienced at the time.

The story is told partly from the point of view of a writer and his friends and partly from the point of view of the Stasi officer spying on them. The Stasi officer can be a manipulative and ruthless interrogator but begins to be influenced by the people he is meant to be keeping an eye on.

The film is in German (original title 'Das Leben der Anderen'). You may have to click the subtitle button on your remote control to turn on English sub-titles.

This film is based on an interesting idea, but is too long, slow, visually drab and depressing. Perhaps that is what the old Communist East Germany tended to be like but Amazon star ratings invite us to rate films for enjoyment, not historical accuracy or importance of message.

The interviews in the Special Features with the main cast and writer/director, some of whom lived in or visited East Germany and have since read their own Stasi files are interesting; those with the Producers less so.

Some things in this film do stick in the memory but overall, it is not as interesting as Anna Funder's book 'Stasiland' on the same subject, nor the German language film 'The Baader-Meinhof Complex' about communist extremists in West Germany around the same time.

2 people found this helpful

Ashish Joshi

The best debut film ever!

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on October 16, 2019

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In his debut feature, German auteur Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, has created a masterpiece of world cinema. It offers us a glimpse of life behind the Iron Curtain of communist East Germany, and the lengths the government went to keep tabs on its citizens. The films chronicles the slow transformation of a loyal officer of the Stasi (the East German secret police) and how his eavesdropping on a young couple leads him to reconsider his whole way of life.

Officer Wiesler (Ulrich Muhe in a stellar performance) is a staunch supporter of the country's vile politics. He decides to bug the apartment of young artist Dreyman (Sebastian Koch) and his gorgeous girlfriend Christa-Maria Sieland (Martina Gedeck) as he suspects them to be disloyal to the government. From an attic room, with headphones clamped to his ears, he becomes privy to their most intimate conversations. As time passes he slowly begins to realize the hollowness and sheer hypocrisy of the regime he has so faithfully served all his life. From being a listener he becomes the unseen participant in their lives, a kind of guardian angel, who saves their skins on more than one occasion. But as time goes and he turns up nothing that could nail the duo, his boss becomes impatient and sets into motion a series of events that lead to a startling denouement.

The film opened to rave reviews and won a slew of awards. It was a Golden Globe nominee in 2007 and scooped up the Oscar for the best foreign language film the same year. See it, for Ulrich Muhe as the tortured soul whose larger-than-life performance, is the driving spirit behind this remarkable piece of cinema!

One person found this helpful

S P Mead

An excellent film

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on March 29, 2016

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"The Lives of Others" is a fantastic film. One of the best I've seen in some time. The events depicted are horrible and tragic. But at the same time, bittersweet.

This movie depicts life in East German in the early to mid 1980's, under the rule of a dictatorial state. The story follows the life of a man and his lover, as he becomes aware of just how bad things are. And the undercover police agent instructed to spy on the couple slowly realises that the social order he helps maintain is corrupt and evil.

It's a brilliantly acted film, with a fascinating story. This is a social and political drama, based on what life was really like in the Eastern Bloc.

This film is in German (with English sub-titles). The Blu-ray picture and sound quality is top notch.

6 people found this helpful

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