Clever beyond words (The Lives Of Others (DVD))

Member Name: shaneo632

Product:	The Lives Of Others (DVD)
Date:	11/09/09 (1 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Smart and well acted

Disadvantages: Slow moving

note: also appears on Flixster and The Student Room

The Lives of Others is a superb German film that won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Film in 2007. It is frequently compared with works as far and wide as George Orwell's 1984 to The Truman Show. In its examination of a deadly surveillance model that goes beyond the means of simply tailing suspicious politicos, it becomes a means through which those surveilling them lives their lives somewhat vicariously, embodied through the fantastic performance of the late Ulrich Mühe.

The film opens in East Berlin in 1984, where a beautiful actress named Christa-Maria Sieland (Martina Gedeck) is lusted after by the lecherous Minister Bruno Hempf, a staunch socialist. She is in a relationship with acclaimed author Georg Dreyman, but this is hardly them playing happy families, as Minister Hempf wants her to "belong" to him, and so Dreyman is marked as a person of interest and surveilled by Stasi agent Hauptmann Gerd Wiesler (Mühe). Wiesler is a fairly emotionless man who lives an almost non-life, but slowly, he realises that something isn't quite right, and he is torn between doing what's right and doing his job.

This is a hugely impressive film that's got an intelligent storyline and serves as an impressive warning against the dangers of a surveillance model working beyond its means. That said, it doesn't have the whizz-bang impact that a lot more casual viewers might want, but it does have a lot of suspense and tension, and some of the twists and turns in the film's latter stages are quite remarkable.

A slickly-made, highly engrossing film with impressive performances. It didn't deserve the "Best Foreign Film" Oscar over Pan's Labyrinth, but this is nonetheless a brilliantly made film.

Summary: Slow paced but rewarding