And, indeed, I will ask on my own account here, an idle question: which is better—cheap happiness or exalted sufferings? Well, which is better?---Fyodor Dostoevsky ---Notes from Underground There are certain people of whom it is difficult to say anything which will at once throw them into relief—in other words, describe them graphically in their typical characteristics. These are they who are generally known as “commonplace people,” and this class comprises, of course, the immense majority of mankind. Authors, as a rule, attempt to select and portray types rarely met with in their entirety, but these types are nevertheless more real than real life itself. For instance, when the whole essence of an ordinary person’s nature lies in his perpetual and unchangeable commonplaceness; and when in spite of all his endeavours to do something out of the common, this person ends, eventually, by remaining in his unbroken line of routine—. I think such an individual really does become a type o...
THE LIVES OF OTHERS (Das Leben Der Anderen 2007)
Wiesler is a fascinating character. His face is a mask, trained by his life to reflect no emotion. Sometimes not even his eyes move. As played in Muehe's performance of infinite subtlety, he watches Dreyman as a cat awaits a mouse. And he begins to internalize their lives -- easy, because he has no life of his own, no lover, no hobby, no distraction from his single-minded job.
He is a veteran in the Stasi whose specialty is interrogations and one way or another he is able to get information he needs from those he is questioning.
One night his boss takes Wiesler to the theatre and suggests he take an interest in a potentially dissident playwright, Georg Dreyman (Sebastian Koch), whose beautiful girlfriend (Martina Gedeck) is appearing in his new play. Once the playwright's apartment is wired, Wiesler and an assistant start 24/7 surveillance from the apartment above.
The film turns into a suspenseful thriller with a complex and powerful moral drive, and in the process Wiesler himself gets transformed (The scene in elevator with neighboring kid powerfully showcases that change) .
At the end of film Wiesler , working as postman, years after the original events took place ,two years after the fall of Berlin Wall and GDR dissolution , spots the book in the store window, titled Sonate vom Guten Menschen (Sonata for a Good Man), and immediately recognizes the author's picture.
He goes inside and opens a copy of the book and reads the dedication "To HGW XX/7, in gratitude".
This brilliant film won the best foreign language film at the 2007 Oscars, and has been regarded by some as the best-ever German film.
The Lives of Others | Das Leben der Anderen | Ending
