Movie. The Lives of Others (Das Leben des Anderen), 2006. (HIx: 2)
This is another post-reunification attempt to come to terms with the story of communist East Germany. Other efforts with this motive include two reviewed earlier in these pages, The Tunnel and Goodbye, Lenin.
The two parties to the conflict are several officers of the Stasi (state security force/secret police) on the one hand, and a circle of artistic types on the other. The Stasi group (led by Ulrich Mühe and Ulrich Tukur) is portrayed, not just with chilling and inhuman competence, but with all the greasy, inner-circle flattery and sycophancy that C. S. Lewis exposed so brilliantly in That Hideous Strength. A playwright (Sebastian Koch) seems “sound” but comes under surveillance, not on the basis of anything observed, but because his girlfriend (Martina Gedeck) is coveted by one of the big shots. But then, the suicide of a close friend (Volkmar Kleinert) who had been blacklisted, coupled with pressure from a more principled friend (Hans-Uwe Bauer) makes him turn in fact.
What makes this film interesting is the thought that an aesthetic experience can reach into the soul and bring about a deep life-change. What does it in this case is a beautiful piano sonata that the playwright had been given by his friend and plays while being eavesdropped. Thus, the Stasi has its tentacles in the lives of the artists; but this time the artists in turn, without even trying, get their tentacles into the Stasi man by means of an aesthetic experience.
In this way, a theme is brought out that transcends the concrete story of the oppression of communist Germany.
Wittgenstein said that ethics is ultimately equivalent to aesthetics. Apparently, Lenin confessed that he had to stop listening to Beethoven, because it made him want to stroke heads rather than smash them in for the revolution. While we would need to modify the insight perspectivally, it is an insight nonetheless; this film makes a real contribution by revealing it in an engaging manner.
There is some nudity, though mostly low-key by American R-rated standards. Thankfully, there is no taking the Lord’s name — although the absence of the Lord altogether must also stand as a criticism. Merely gaining a sensitivity to “the lives of others” is hardly enough to fill the God-sized hole in every man’s heart.