The Lives of Others/Das Leben der Anderen

The Lives of Others, written and directed by Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, is the best film I've seen in a long time. Less cloyingly manipulative than The Queen (for all the power of the latter), it draws from a wider palette of emotional tones to leave me with the impression (of course, illusory) that I really know what it's like to have lived in the Stasi-ridden German Democratic Republic in the 1980s. The heroism of the three main characters is drawn from the business of holding on to principles when the state defines what ideals its citizens should hold and when those in power can hide behind the pursuit of those ideals to get what they want; and also that living under a totalitarian government is just that - living, with highs and well as lows. There is farce among the need for conspiracy, and nobility in the unimaginative bureaucratic devotion to an ideal that characterises the Stasi captain Wiesler, played by Ulrich Muehe with consistent outward self-control. The film's treatment of Christa-Maria Sieland, played by Martina Gedeck, could be viewed as a comment on gender relations in a society where all politics, including the sexual, have been monopolised by the party; both Wiesler and Christa-Maria's lover, playwright Georg Dreymann, played by Sebastian Koch, are in their way innocent idealists in an environment that is far more aggressively careerist than it pretends to be.