The Lives of Others

This film piped 'Pan's labyrinth" to the best foreign film at the Oscars - and we wanted to know why! The trailers for it in the cinema made it look really quite suspenseful, but truly that wasn't the case.

The plot revolves around the surveillance of Dreyman, a playwright suspected of western leanings by the Stasi official, Wiesler. The real reason for the surveillance is that one of the ministers in the Party Central Committee is attracted to Dreyman's girlfriend, so if Dreyman is arrested, he can have free reign.

Dreyman supports the regime, but not the way dissidents are treated, and having a hidden typewriter in his apartment, supplies an article on GDR suicide rates to an FDR magazine. To test if the apartment is bugged, Dreyman and his friends discuss a 'covert' operation to smuggle someone to the west. The car isn't searched, so they assume they are not bugged, but in truth Weisman has taken pity on him, so he decides to lie for them.

Meanwhile Dreyman's girlfriend is arrested for being supplied with banned narcotics, and in her anguish turns Dreyman in. The Stasi search of the apartment finds nothing. Suspecting his pity, Weisman in brought in to interrogate her, and she confesses its location. During a second search the hiding place is searched, but no typewriter is found, although Dreyman's girlfriend commits suicide by walking in front of a truck. The surveillance now being pointless is called off.

After unification, Dreyman is told that he was under surveillance, unbeknown to him, and researches his records. He notes that all his surveillance was completed by one operative, who didn't report what he was actually doing, and a red smudge on the last page reveals that it was he who moved the typewriter. Dreyman decides to seek this man out, but he decides not to meet with him, instead dedicating his new book to him.

Personally I thought it was too long, and didn't move at a suitable pace, I got bored to be honest. That's not to say it wasn't a good film, and a good study of East Germany during the cold war, I just couldn't fathom how they thought it was better than Pan's labyrinth. 2 Stars.