The Lives Of Others DVD Review

Like the fine, cold, and calculating government surveillance operator in charge of watching over a subversive artist, everything in “The Lives of Others” goes accordingly to plan. Here is a polemic about the preciousness of personal space and identity that, rather ironically I should think, has no identity itself. And there’s not even a hint of deviation from this film’s sober and rather obvious <in caveman voice> cold-war=bad worldview. Not a hint of ambiguity, either, as the film’s characters, one the watcher and other the watch-e, live out their lives (of others) like an avatar from “The Sims” and a bored player who’s been in front of the keyboard for too long.

“The Lives of Others” is this year’s obligatory foreign film “sensation.” The film even bested (…the infinitely more lively and human…) “Pan’s Labyrinth” for the Foreign Film Oscar. This is what I call a foreign film for people who don’t like foreign films because it’s so easy to read, so black and white in terms of ideology and so linear in terms of plot mechanics. You walk away from this film it feeling like you’ve seen something; and all proud of yourself for being able to read subtitles. In one pivotal scene, the artist, on the verge of being blacklisted, looks for a missing Bertolt Brecht book. It turns out the agent watching him took this book while installing hidden microphones in his apartment. But for what reason? Suddenly, film holds on a shot of the cold agent reading the book. His face softens. We discover along with the man that literature has melted his cold German armor. Go art! More than anything, the film is about this agent’s journey into feeling-ness. His increasing obsession with the precision that goes along with his soulless job (sousing out anti-communist liars) finds itself confronted by a flurry of humanism. Reminiscent of “The Conversation” and “The Conformist” and with trace amounts of the voyeuristic thrill found in “Rear Window” (minus all of Hitchcock’s pizzazz and wryness), this film, instead, is closer to “Another Stakeout” in its voyeur inscribed falseness.

With all the parts are there and accounted for it’s hard to find fault with the filmmaking, per say. As directed by Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck this is a confident work. The story movies like clockwork, the editing is concise and Donnersmark’s steady filmmaking style is most assured. But precision filmmaking will only get a film so far. Sometimes, a well made film isn’t a good film. The protagonist’s arc in particular doesn’t feel organic and this, I’m afraid, disrupts any hope of authenticity that the film had. I never bought into the crucial turning point of the story. After years of loyal duty to the East German party line, the watcher Captain Gerd Wiesler (played by Ulrich Mühe), undergoes a life altering change of heart by, well, finding his heart. He then decides to cover for the subject he’s surveying by not including his subversive dealings in his official transcripts. The Capitan, in other words, becomes an artist in his own right by creating a fictionalized “normal” life for this man on paper that his supervisor can read—this form of resistance is, of course, the film’s metaphorical signpost for the fall of communism. But why do this? I would normally be willing to accept such a plot device as a necessary conceit, but the film doesn’t even bother to give the slightest indication as to why this artist’s “secret” particularly stands out (other than it needs to for the metaphor to work). Equally confounding is the explanation for why the Captain would be silently persuaded to put his life and job on the line to become a techno guardian angel that keeps an unknowing soul out of trouble.

This film is sterile and plastic-covered in its preachy moral discourse and artificially engendered bouts of human melodrama. Sadly, like most of German cinema of this day that makes it stateside (from Run Lola Run to Goodbye, Lenin to Head On to Uva Boll), “The Lives of Others” has all the distinctness of a government sanctioned trinket made on some sort of German culture assembly line.

The DVD While I'm no fan of Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck's film, I am a fan of the filmmaker's ability to hold court when discussing his work. I've seen him on a variety of interview shows including Charlie Rose (which I would have loved to see included here) and his analysis is adroit and informative. His commentary on this DVD is no different. von Donnersmarck explores not only the filmmaking process that ranges from funding to the writing process but also the themes and historical relevance. While German, it's amazing how clear his English is. In fact, Donnersmark sounds more Americans than most Americans. This extra is well worth a listen. The filmmaker is also included in a half-hour interview—if you haven't listened to the commentary check this out, otherwise just stick with the audio. There are also seven deleted scenes; none, however, manage to sway me on my unpopular feeling that this film is overrated. And finally there is a decent making-of feature that follows the film from its inception, to its casting to its enormous successes during awards season. Bottom line: if you're a fan of the film, the DVD is well worth your time. I'm among the few out there that is NOT a fan of “The Lives of Others” and still found the DVD to be fascinating.