FREE ON CINEGEEK.DE The Lives Of Others (engl. subt.)

Sometime at the border to Helmstedt, we stood in line with our car. My whole family on the way from West Berlin to West Germany. Transit. My father was annoyed. It was hot and nothing went ahead. My father asked, "Couldn't they send an officer over? The border soldier instructed my father: "There are no civil servants in the GDR - only workers and farmers. "Then send a peasant. Waiting even longer. My mother was furiously angry: "You've really given it to them now. That was the GDR for me. Stress at the inner-German border. That's why this other, opposing perspective now seems all the more interesting to me! One of the dreaded Stasi employees is sitting there. With headphones. His face as if frozen. He overhears a conversation. A captain of the Stasi, that feared secret police of the GDR. Night after night he sits in the attic, eavesdropping on the conversations in the apartment below him. A writer lives there with his beautiful lover. One of the few authors to be successfully published in the West. In the GDR he was not to blame for anything. Really? "One of our only writers read in the West and loyal to our government." Wiesler, as the agent is called, follows the events with suspicion. Is he jealous? Simply dutiful? Curious? After all, he has the whole apartment wired up. But there is nothing to suggest that the author Dreyman is disloyal. Apparently Dreyman believes in GDR socialism. But wouldn't a man like Dreyman have to be guilty? But the actually fascinating figure is Wiesler. His face serves as a mask. Ulrich Mühe plays him with infinite subtlety. Like a cat, he lurks on Dreyman. Wiesler has no hobbies. No life. But nothing can be attached to Dreyman. I try it without spoiling: Wiesler is asked by his superior, Dreyman simply something lying to attach. A faithful spy whom you command to be wrong... Wiesler is in conflict. But he has no one to talk to. He lives in a world of paranoia. The slightest mistake could end in disaster. Once a young man in the Stasi canteen makes a joke about the government. Wiesler doesn't laugh. With a cold mine he inquires about the man's name. The same could happen to Wiesler. What does he have left? His empty face. And an instinctive decision, which should change his whole life... The Berlin Wall falls in 1989. We see the event in the film, which today - 30 years later - is all the more interesting! Is that relevant today? The GDR practiced listening to the citizens and secret torture. Do Western democracies not guarantee that? That's exactly why the GDR went under. A country in which even the most loyal citizens could no longer believe. Always driven by evil spirits from outside (the West), aggression was invoked within the country (the Stasi). The GDR was not destroyed by American bombs. It imploded from within. All this The Lives Of Others constructs in secret thoughts and desires. It begins with a lesson in Wiesler's theory, abhorrent interrogation practices. Then the wall falls. Not with a bang. Rather with a whisper. And Wiesler? I can only anticipate that I was moved to tears. What a film!