Feb
Das Leben der Anderen (The Lives of Others) is a brutal yet moving account of life in the GDR a few years prior to the Wall being felled. It focuses on the ways in which State Security (Stasi) kept tabs on every citizen (especially artists) by tapping phone calls, bugging their homes and watching their every move. Regular citizens were not the only victims of the regime but so were State Security officials—artfully portrayed through the Hauptmann Gerd Wiesler character in the film.
Wiesler, better known in the Ministry as HGW/XX7, is a spy and interrogator who begins to question the morality of the regime and his own job while spying on a prominent writer and his girlfriend. Wiesler is played by Ulrich Mühe, an actual victim of the Stasi ever since he began his acting career. He also proved to be a valuable asset while director Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck wrote the script; helping him gain a true sense of life during that period—the language, environment, conflicts and fears.
One of the comments by Florian on the ‘Special Features’ disc that caught my attention was a mental image that sparked the idea for this film. Florian was captivated when he heard the “Sonata for a Good Man” track but wondered what it would be like for someone who didn’t enjoy the music but was forced to listen to it. That was it… the single image in his head around which he thought up this brilliant film! Here’s what the eventual image looked like in the film—Wiesler listening to the music while the subject he’s spying on plays it on the piano:
