Very still lives

andres

While I like it a bit more than Clive did, I criticize it on the same grounds in a review for Amazon.com; see here: http://www.amazon.com/gp/cdp/member-reviews/A2SLA0SXRQV8M0/ref=pd_ys_homenav_rev/104-4651995-3689559?ie=UTF8&sort%5Fby=MostRecentReview&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_s=right-1&pf_rd_r=0V53P3N7WYEN7AY5J2CK&pf_rd_t=1501&pf_rd_p=258341001&pf_rd_i=home

John Merchant

Agreed. Last year's "Pan's Labyrinth," - the film that "The Lives of Others" beat out for best foreign film at the oscars last year - made a far more eloquent indictment of the stiltifying effects totalitarianism imparts upon the independent human spirit.

Art Strim

Thank God someone else didn't like this movie. It gave me the creeps -- like, 'how nice, a feel good movie about the Stasi!' It was a shrewd play for Hollywood success -- everybody hates the Stasi, and it's not implausible that at some time someone in the Stasi had a change of heart, so let's work it! The premise was unreal -- if they wanted to destroy the playwright they would manufacture dirt about him; no need to look for actual dirt. That's the real terror behind that kind of police power, much greater than their power to actually investigate.

pietro

you don't know what you are talking about. this film was powerful and made a deep impact on me. don't listen to critics. what's the personal impact? my boyfriend and i left the cinema crying. you have to take into account that east germans had been exposed over time to tricklings of west german culture, so it wasn't a rapid transformation. the movie left plenty of clues to that effect. i loved pan's labrynth too. i loved them both. i do think the story of pan's labrynth was overshadowed by the use of special effects.

Steve Sailer

I explained the Stasi agent Wiesler's conversion in my review in The American Conservative: "Wiesler embodies every Teutonic tendency, including emotional repression and obsessive-compulsive punctuality. Yet, as terrifying as his efficiency is in a bad cause, from von Donnersmarck's refreshingly patriotic standpoint, his stereotypically German qualities mark him as redeemable. "As Wiesler eavesdrops, he begins to sympathize with his victims. The turning point comes when the playwright learns that his despairing former director has killed himself. He sits down at his piano and plays a sonata the dead man had given him, touching the secret policeman's German soul. "Von Donnersmarck's original inspiration for his movie had been anticipated in Tom Stoppard's 1974 play Travesties, which quotes Lenin saying that when he listens to Beethoven's Appassionata sonata, he wants to "pat the heads of those people who while living in this vile hell can create such beauty," but he can't afford to indulge his love of music, however, because now is the time "to hit heads, to hit them without mercy." "Von Donnersmarck writes, "What if Lenin could have somehow been forced to listen to the Appassionata, just as he was getting ready to smash in somebody's head? … I 'saw' a picture of a man in a depressing room, with earphones on his head, expecting to hear words that go against his beloved ideology, but actually hearing a music so beautiful and so powerful that it makes him re-think (or rather: re-feel)."" Now, this conception may not be terribly realistic -- but, then, most movies are more or less man-bites-dog stories -- but it's worthy of some respect.

samuil

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