Das Leben der Anderen(German Language) [DVD] [2007]

the best film I've seen for a very long time.I watched it at the end of my free month's trial on 'Prime'. I didn't have very high hopes of it; most of what I'd watched was drivel and Prime has a habit of seriously 'dumbing down' its synopsis of the film so it's really pot luck which I end up watching.Despite full subtitles throughout, which I normally avoid, I was completely riveted and watched wearing my glasses as I didn't want to miss a word :)Scary, harrowing and heartwarming by turn, it balances reality with humanity perfectly without ever veering towards the violent or slushy and the subtle twists are surprising, believeable and well-timed.It's a very timely reminder of what life was like behind the 'iron curtain', and serves as a serious warning to those of us who remember it (and indeed, those who don't), who feel that our own country - the UK - is edging ever closer to this kind of scenario under the present Tory government. We must resist this at all costs!!

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

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.

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.