Listen very carefully

http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/film/film_reviews/article1642044.ece

The Lives of Others is a remarkable study of human values in a Big Brother society, says Cosmo Landesman

I can remember thinking when the year 1984 came and went: at last, we can put all that silly talk of Big Brother Britain behind us. And then, just two years ago, Britain’s information commissioner, Richard Thomas, claimed we were “sleepwalking into a surveillance society”. Thomas and the Big-Brother-is-coming brigade are quick to point out that Britain has more CCTV cameras than any other country in the world. May I suggest that those who feel threatened by the snooping state should go and see The Lives of Others, for they will see what the surveillance society is really like.

The film is set in the German Democratic Republic of 1984. The Berlin Wall is still up, but socialism is starting to crumble through its inner corruption. Society is held together not by solidarity but by the state security service (Stasi), which employs 100,000 people and uses 200,000 informers. Here is a world where the wrong joke, the inappropriate question or just a look on your face can draw attention from a state security captain such as Gerd Wiesler (Ulrich Möhe).

Wiesler is an expert in, and teacher of, interrogation techniques and the art of surveillance. What makes him so dangerous is not just his ruthless efficiency but his righteous belief. He is a man with a mission: to protect socialism from its enemies. One night at the theatre, he spots the state’s favourite playwright, Georg Dreyman (Sebastian Koch), offstage in an embrace with his beautiful girlfriend and leading lady, the celebrated actress Christa-Maria Sieland (Martina Gedeck). He tells his boss, Grubitz (Ulrich Tukur), that Dreyman is “arrogant” and should be watched. Grubitz believes Dreyman is clean: “He’s our only nonsubversive writer who is read in the West.”

But a member of the Central Committee, Bruno Hempf (Thomas Thieme), has taken a fancy to Dreyman’s girlfriend and wants Dreyman out of the picture, so he tells Grubitz to check on the writer. The case is given to Wiesler, who has Dreyman and Sieland’s flat bugged and then sets up his base in a deserted attic at the top of the apartment block. There, through his headphones, he monitors the lives of the two lovers. Wiesler has infiltrated Dreyman’s life, but what the all-knowing security agent doesn’t realise is that Dreyman’s life will come to infiltrate him.

The Lives of Others is a remarkable directorial/screenwriting feature debut from the 33-year-old German director Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck. It has the confidence and economy of a mature film-maker’s best work. He has managed to make a serious film that touches on issues of trust, betrayal, art and compromise, and to do it in a way that is quiet and easy to absorb. It has none of the puffed-up self-importance of a film like Syriana. Just compare the title, The Lives of Others, with that of another film about the prisoners of the Stasi, the documentary called The Decomposition of the Soul. What von Donnersmarck has done is to get right into the heart of this socialist tyranny without resorting to heavy dramatics — nobody is tortured, there are no terrible screams. And we register the sheer horror and the daily dose of fear that infects lives by just looking at the faces of ordinary people. In one chilling scene, a compromised neighbour who has seen Wiesler’s men bug the playwright’s flat is asked by Dreyman to help with his tie. He whispers to her so that his girlfriend can’t hear him seeking help, but the poor woman knows that the Stasi in the attic is listening and fears she will pay a price for this innocent exchange.

Von Donnersmarck’s film is the perfect antidote to the cult of Ostalgie — nostalgia for the good old days of East Germany, with its kitschy consumer goods and tinny little cars, affectionately portrayed in the comedy Good Bye Lenin! But while the story is serious and full of tragic irony, it’s also sexy and funny. One of Wiesler’s snooping assistants says he loves to listen in on artists: “They’re at it all the time!” And although there is an element of tragedy in it, the film is also a celebration of change and what the most compromised of human beings are capable of becoming. Von Donnersmarck has an old-fashioned belief in the transformative power of art to change people for the better.

It’s through the love between Dreyman and Sieland that the film focuses on the story of Dreyman and Wiesler. Both are naive idealists who shed their illusions about the system; and — Dreyman through an illegal article about East German suicide rates for the West German magazine Der Spiegel, Wiesler through his falsified reports about the couple — both rewrite the story of their lives.

Until now, our foremost cinematic snoop has been Gene Hackman’s wiretap expert, Harry Caul, in Francis Ford Coppola’s The Conversation. Indeed, Caul and Wiesler have a lot in common, including the empty apartment devoid of all signs of life. But Ulrich Möhe gives such a subtle and commanding performance as Wiesler that Hackman now has some competition.

The Lives of Others 15, 138 mins