Sunday, March 11, 2007
Friday Movie Review (quite late)
Went with Beata to see the Best Foreign Film this past year, Das Leben der Anderen, The Lives of Others, set in East Berlin (probably mainly in the artsy section whose name I've forgotten) beginning in 1984, it is the tale of human connection without connection and anonymous redemption. It is by far the best German movie I have ever seen (but perhaps that is faint praise). It is made by more than a mouthful sophomore director Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck and my hat's off to him--there's nothing too stylistically cutting edge, no green screen magic, but it tells a heck of a story.
It is not a cautionary tale of what the right wing is currently doing in America, although there have to be some on the left who think that. It is a single tale from the billion page history of 20th Century left wing excesses, where nearly all the political murder, violence and soul numbing state security turning of informants was perpetrated by the left. In that sense it is 100% looking back, and not in the ostalgia we've seen some in reunified Germany have for the old days before the wall fell, especially evident in comedies like Sonnenallee and Good Bye, Lenin!
This is the dark side of a communist dictatorship, here the Deutsche Demokratische Republik (DDR) East Germany, which was policed by the technically proficient Stasi, but ruled by the weakness and whim of corrupt men. Men with huge tidywhities who rape women in the back of their imported Volvo limos while the rest of the people walk or drive the execrable Trabant. That's the plot starter--mere lust, for which the nomenklaturnik denounces a loyal playwrite in order to remove a rival. But that's not the worst of it--the betrayal of the hero playwrite by his actress/lover is as complete as Winston Smith's of his lover in 1984--Do it to Julia indeed. Heartbreaking. And she knows it and takes the proper if tragic course of the betrayer.
But it's not a complete downer as some German films are wont to be--this has a wealth of human emotion, telling detail after telling detail, with enough irony to keep a film discussion going into the small hours. And as small as it is, there is a triumph of the human spirit in the arc of the anti-hero from a terrible sword and shield of the state to ein guter Mensch, who buys the book dedicated to him in the Karl Marx bookstore for himself. You don't cry, but you sure are glad you saw it.
It's 2 and a quarter hours long but it has enough edge of your chair suspense that it mostly flies by. Great performances by lead lovers Sebastian Koch and Martina Gedeck and by the bad guys, with the same first name, Ulrich Muehe and Ulrich Tukur. Muehe (who has an umlaut rather than a first 'e' in his name) is really superb. A lot of people were complaining that they couldn't see why he would change--I thought he made it real with his tightly controlled acting--being smitten by Martina, hearing the truth from a little boy, finding out why he was placing Sebastian under surveillance and growing to admire him. I thought it made a lot of psychological sense. It has sub-titles, so soldier on if you don't speak German, but it is pretty magnificent, just the history makes this a must see.
It is not a cautionary tale of what the right wing is currently doing in America, although there have to be some on the left who think that. It is a single tale from the billion page history of 20th Century left wing excesses, where nearly all the political murder, violence and soul numbing state security turning of informants was perpetrated by the left. In that sense it is 100% looking back, and not in the ostalgia we've seen some in reunified Germany have for the old days before the wall fell, especially evident in comedies like Sonnenallee and Good Bye, Lenin!
This is the dark side of a communist dictatorship, here the Deutsche Demokratische Republik (DDR) East Germany, which was policed by the technically proficient Stasi, but ruled by the weakness and whim of corrupt men. Men with huge tidywhities who rape women in the back of their imported Volvo limos while the rest of the people walk or drive the execrable Trabant. That's the plot starter--mere lust, for which the nomenklaturnik denounces a loyal playwrite in order to remove a rival. But that's not the worst of it--the betrayal of the hero playwrite by his actress/lover is as complete as Winston Smith's of his lover in 1984--Do it to Julia indeed. Heartbreaking. And she knows it and takes the proper if tragic course of the betrayer.
But it's not a complete downer as some German films are wont to be--this has a wealth of human emotion, telling detail after telling detail, with enough irony to keep a film discussion going into the small hours. And as small as it is, there is a triumph of the human spirit in the arc of the anti-hero from a terrible sword and shield of the state to ein guter Mensch, who buys the book dedicated to him in the Karl Marx bookstore for himself. You don't cry, but you sure are glad you saw it.
It's 2 and a quarter hours long but it has enough edge of your chair suspense that it mostly flies by. Great performances by lead lovers Sebastian Koch and Martina Gedeck and by the bad guys, with the same first name, Ulrich Muehe and Ulrich Tukur. Muehe (who has an umlaut rather than a first 'e' in his name) is really superb. A lot of people were complaining that they couldn't see why he would change--I thought he made it real with his tightly controlled acting--being smitten by Martina, hearing the truth from a little boy, finding out why he was placing Sebastian under surveillance and growing to admire him. I thought it made a lot of psychological sense. It has sub-titles, so soldier on if you don't speak German, but it is pretty magnificent, just the history makes this a must see.
# posted by Roger Fraley @ 9:32 PM 
