The Lives of Others - (Das Leben der Anderen): Microphone? What microphone?

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That would make sense. I was just unsure as why this would be bad for Grubitz, since the minister wanted Christa-Maria done away with anyway. I suppose Grubitz felt Wiesler was no longer to be trusted.

― Neil S, Monday, 23 April 2007 15:51 (seventeen years ago) link

I don't know who you are eater, but I love you...

― kv_nol, Monday, 23 April 2007 16:06 (seventeen years ago) link

In real life the price for betraying the Stasi was death, a point made in a very good Sight and Sound article.

Apparently many people in Germany refuse to even see the movie because it suggests a kind of redemption for the Stasi. Today many ex-Stasi STILL don't acknowledge that they did anything wrong, and far from delivering junk mail, they actually have some of the best jobs because when the wall fell they were the ones with solid employment backgrounds and nice flats. The question posed by the article is, if you were the caretaker of Auschwitz, would you allow a filmmaker to shoot scenes there about a fictional SS officer who had a change of heart and tried to save some Jews? In an atmosphere where Jews had never received any significant compensation for the crimes committed against them?

The director says that the movie's not supposed to be about what really happened, but about the human capacity to change for the better no matter how far down the wrong road it had gone. But the actual Stasi of 1980s Germany offers no examples to support this idea.

― Tracer Hand, Monday, 23 April 2007 16:11 (seventeen years ago) link

many ex-Stasi STILL don't acknowledge that they did anything wrong, and far from delivering junk mail, they actually have some of the best jobs because when the wall fell they were the ones with solid employment backgrounds and nice flats.

Well yeah - but Wiesler was only sorting mail because he was demoted on suspicion of covering up evidence. It's not like there's any suggestion that the rest of the Stasi are living on hard times. Dreyman meets the old minister at the theatre later on and it seems quite clear the latter has a very nice life. He may not be Stasi, but I think he kind of stands in, in the film, for the party apparatus of the past, refusing to acknowledge its crimes.

Incidentally, Dreyman didn't half seem like a dumbo. I didn't really understand why the other writers were hanging out with him.

― Alba, Monday, 23 April 2007 16:25 (seventeen years ago) link

He only read two and a half books a year!

― Alba, Monday, 23 April 2007 16:26 (seventeen years ago) link

i think the movie makes it clear that he was less talented than his friends, it was part of his success

― gff, Monday, 23 April 2007 16:30 (seventeen years ago) link

Alba, the S&S article was referring to the job that Dreyman sees him doing a couple of years on - delivering mail to people's houses - not the purgatory-style demotion he was given.

Also I sort of lost it when Mr. Unfeeling started reading Dreyman's copy of Brecht and swooning at the rediscovery of his own humanity. It was about the most un-Brechtian scene one could imagine, tender underscoring urging the audience towards a recognition of the generous, beating heart beneath the gray uniform of the oppressor!

― Tracer Hand, Monday, 23 April 2007 17:45 (seventeen years ago) link

In real life the price for betraying the Stasi was death, a point made in a very good Sight and Sound article.

that is a gross exaggeration. There are several Stasi guys in Anna Funder's book who fuck up in one way or another and suffer career suicide and various unpleasantness, but not actual death. I reckon you would be killed for passing secrets to the West (Markus Wolf says as much), but not for going rubbish.

― The Real Dirty Vicar, Monday, 23 April 2007 17:50 (seventeen years ago) link

Tracer, you make it sound way more over the top than it actually was. It's like a single shot of a guy reading a book and you happen to know what book it is. They don't even bring it up again. I took it less as "the discovery of his own humanity" than as an attempt to live like Dreyman did--to play at being an artist and not a stasi agent.

This movie is pretty much the exemplar for how challenging it is to show internal change on film. They do most things right and it's still a pretty tough sell.

― call all destroyer, Monday, 23 April 2007 17:54 (seventeen years ago) link

Alba, the S&S article was referring to the job that Dreyman sees him doing a couple of years on - delivering mail to people's houses - not the purgatory-style demotion he was given.

Well yeah, but the fact that he was still working in a menial, mail-related job, was because of his original demotion, surely? I certainly got that impression. So my point stands - the film isn't suggesting that most Stasi ended up being postmen.

― Alba, Monday, 23 April 2007 17:59 (seventeen years ago) link

i sort of assumed that when he was job hunting after the wall came down, he didn't make a big deal out of being a high level stasi interrogator agent

― gff, Monday, 23 April 2007 18:05 (seventeen years ago) link

I doubt any of them did, but the connections and networks still existed, so they wouldn't have had to. I agree with Alba that he was in hard times because he'd spent the past 4 years as an outcast.

― stet, Monday, 23 April 2007 18:08 (seventeen years ago) link

I was a bit surprised that they gave out the real names and details of former Stasi officers so freely. Surely that would have been inviting revenge attacks?

― stet, Monday, 23 April 2007 18:09 (seventeen years ago) link

Yeah - I found that very hard to believe too! Can anyone confirm that that was a bit of artistic licence?

And yes, gff - as Tracer said, like white people in post-apartheid SA or whatever else, they carried on having "the best jobs because when the wall fell they were the ones with solid employment backgrounds and nice flats". But that didn't apply to Wiesler, and I think the film leads you to see that as a result of his demotion, so the point that S&S makes is bogus, I think.

― Alba, Monday, 23 April 2007 18:15 (seventeen years ago) link

CAD otm, Tracer i think you are being too hard on this. the spy swooning when he listens to the dude playing piano or reading his radikal literatur are a little pat on their own, yeah. but dreyman's total committment to the "humanistic system" (rather than punching the clock like his subordinates or gaming it like his superiors) means he was that much more susceptible to going native after hours and hours of absorbing arty tranzi dissident life -- surely being a marginally talented writer IS a better existence than being a spy. i found his falling in love with and protectiveness of the couple totally believable.

xposts

― gff, Monday, 23 April 2007 18:19 (seventeen years ago) link

if anything the movie rigs the deck by making the minister of culture too much a pig. imagine if HE was as ruthless and efficient as dreyman, or didn't really give a fuck about christa-maria. the movie would kind of go nowhere.

the final plot twists of who knows what, who may or may not have sold out whom, fatal misunderstandings, etc, are completely non-brechtian hollywood victorhugoist and i guess therefore reactionary but SFW, i love that shit!

― gff, Monday, 23 April 2007 18:23 (seventeen years ago) link

Can we stop calling Wiesler "Dreyman" please?!

― Alba, Monday, 23 April 2007 18:23 (seventeen years ago) link

(Dreyman was the rubbish playwright)

― Alba, Monday, 23 April 2007 18:23 (seventeen years ago) link

oh shit you're right

― gff, Monday, 23 April 2007 18:25 (seventeen years ago) link

btw the onion knocked this for having "no real visual sense" or something which is just bonkers

― gff, Monday, 23 April 2007 18:26 (seventeen years ago) link

-- and the post-wall reworking of his play was totally rubbish -- a spiritual-like woman in a toga offering to "cover your shift"? xpost

― stet, Monday, 23 April 2007 18:27 (seventeen years ago) link

Even Dreyman walked out!

― Alba, Monday, 23 April 2007 18:30 (seventeen years ago) link

I think Stasi people found it quite hard to get some jobs (public service, say). Likewise the Inoffiziell Mitarbeiters, who were pretty fucked. But according to Anna Funder a lot of former Stasi guys became... insurance salesmen.

― The Real Dirty Vicar, Monday, 23 April 2007 18:39 (seventeen years ago) link

Dreymann's play did not very good in either version, for all the impressive staging.

― The Real Dirty Vicar, Monday, 23 April 2007 18:39 (seventeen years ago) link

did not LOOK very good. Gah.

― The Real Dirty Vicar, Monday, 23 April 2007 22:48 (seventeen years ago) link

I took it less as "the discovery of his own humanity" than as an attempt to live like Dreyman did--to play at being an artist and not a stasi agent.

I'd agree with this.

Also DV OTM re. the play. It looked painfully dull!

― kv_nol, Tuesday, 24 April 2007 08:30 (seventeen years ago) link

Its quite possible that the film itself is the film of Dreyman's book, and hence misses a few key points (and more importantly marks Dreyman out to be cluelessly heroic rather than a weaselly collaborator woth not political nouse).

― Pete, Tuesday, 24 April 2007 09:44 (seventeen years ago) link

Ooh.

― Alba, Tuesday, 24 April 2007 10:30 (seventeen years ago) link

I had real problems with the movie, for reasons that Alba's already mentioned. Having some secondhand experience with the effects of totalitarianism (mainly, family who've fled Cuba), you simply don't read a Brecht poem and feel your soul expand with wonder and light.

― Alfred, Lord Sotosyn, Tuesday, 24 April 2007 11:20 (seventeen years ago) link

In discussion, my beloved and I felt that a film solely about Stasi agents being bad would lack dramatic tension.

― The Real Dirty Vicar, Tuesday, 24 April 2007 11:38 (seventeen years ago) link

alfred otm: what the fuck, given brecht's own collusion with the east german cp, is brecht doing in this?

― That one guy that quit, Tuesday, 24 April 2007 12:15 (seventeen years ago) link

Christ, everybody is being so reductive and nitpicky about this movie--as if the Brecht-reading scene was the turning point of the entire story, or as if we could tell how good the play was from the four lines of dialogue they showed. I'm not saying the internal logic was perfect but no way is there one particular element that sinks the whole ship.

― call all destroyer, Tuesday, 24 April 2007 13:08 (seventeen years ago) link

Yeah, I too liked it until the guy started his awakening on the road to becoming human. Has anyone thought of the idea that maybe the guy's helping/meddling actually made things [i]worse[i]?

― James Redd and the Blecchs, Tuesday, 24 April 2007 13:21 (seventeen years ago) link

worse

― James Redd and the Blecchs, Tuesday, 24 April 2007 13:22 (seventeen years ago) link

It's possible, although Dreyman certainly doesn't get away with publishing his article without Weisler's help.

― call all destroyer, Tuesday, 24 April 2007 13:24 (seventeen years ago) link

everybody is being so reductive and nitpicky about this movie

Because we're not saying how much we loved it?

― kv_nol, Tuesday, 24 April 2007 13:35 (seventeen years ago) link

i was a little disappointed that wiesler didn't turn out to be a better writer than dreyman. there was a little window opened where he's creating scenes of his "writing sessions" on the Lenin play out of whole cloth, i really wanted his superiors to want line-by-line info on this fake play, meaning he has to be up all night writing it. that would have been great.

― gff, Tuesday, 24 April 2007 13:39 (seventeen years ago) link

"his" confusion there, sorry.

― gff, Tuesday, 24 April 2007 13:39 (seventeen years ago) link

x-post

No, because people are seizing on seconds-long sequences of the film and acting as if they constitute massive dramatic failures.

― call all destroyer, Tuesday, 24 April 2007 13:45 (seventeen years ago) link

I guess if Wiesler's transformation didn't feel real to them, then they naturally pick out things in the film that seem they were there to make it work.

― Alba, Tuesday, 24 April 2007 14:00 (seventeen years ago) link

Yeah.

I forgot the most important thing about the S&S article which is that not only did Weisler not exist but he could never have existed. Imagining that he could have betrays - according to the article - a misunderstanding of the nature of totalitarianism in general, and the Stasi specifically. No Stasi agent would have been able to keep a secret like that, because everything was rigorously cross-checked and verified. No Stasi agent would have been on control of an entire investigation, from surveillance to interrogation, the way Weisler was. But more importantly, not only would no Stasi agent be able to turn, no Stasi agent would WANT to turn, at least on the basis of the kind of events the movie depicts. People whose inner convictions can be swayed are weeded out very early in the process. I can see something insanely traumatic changing an agent - a death, an assault, an an acid trip - but - and the film hinges on this - art? (The director said his first spark of inspiration for the movie was a quote from Lenin, saying that if he kept listening to a certain piece of music he'd never finish his revolution.)

― Tracer Hand, Tuesday, 24 April 2007 14:49 (seventeen years ago) link

OTM. The whole conversion was a little too E.M. Forster.

― James Redd and the Blecchs, Tuesday, 24 April 2007 14:53 (seventeen years ago) link

"Only connect, through the magical world of poetry, and disconnect the surveillance microphone."

― James Redd and the Blecchs, Tuesday, 24 April 2007 14:55 (seventeen years ago) link

I wanted an awesome fake play as well! I did really like this film although the change wasn't too convincing, plus Wiesler kept reminding me of the guy off Grand Designs.

― Not the real Village People, Tuesday, 24 April 2007 14:56 (seventeen years ago) link

The fake play was dire. Was it supposed to be?

― Tracer Hand, Tuesday, 24 April 2007 14:58 (seventeen years ago) link

I know enough not to expect things like fake plays to be good ever since being disappointed by Holly Martin's mistaken identity impromptu speech at the HQBMT on the Crisis of Faith in The Third Man

― James Redd and the Blecchs, Tuesday, 24 April 2007 15:01 (seventeen years ago) link

Although I did enjoy Robert Donet's rousing impromptu stump speech for the long-named local politician in The Thirty-Nine Steps

― James Redd and the Blecchs, Tuesday, 24 April 2007 15:02 (seventeen years ago) link

Donat

― James Redd and the Blecchs, Tuesday, 24 April 2007 15:05 (seventeen years ago) link

a bit schmaltzy

In an Oscar-winning foreign film? Git outta town!

― Dr Morbius, Tuesday, 24 April 2007 15:10 (seventeen years ago) link

One of the things I love about this thread is the way so many of the "I know all about East Germany" comments above are direct, unattributed quotes from Anna Funder's article in Sight & Sound.

― The Real Dirty Vicar, Friday, 27 April 2007 17:25 (seventeen years ago) link

Skipping 129 messages at this point... Click here if you want to load them all.

The Third Man would have been in the running if only they had kept the original ending where Joseph Cotten goes off with Alida Valli.

― James Redd and the Blecchs, Thursday, 14 February 2008 17:18 (sixteen years ago) link

for best romcom?

― s1ocki, Thursday, 14 February 2008 17:19 (sixteen years ago) link

I love that the "ryan reynolds: more than wilder!" article in ew actually had him holding his chin and looking to the side thoughtfully.

i loved his cameo in harold & kumar but worry about all this heavy lifting

― da croupier, Thursday, 14 February 2008 17:20 (sixteen years ago) link

more than VAN wilder, in case you thought they meant gene.

― da croupier, Thursday, 14 February 2008 17:20 (sixteen years ago) link

And it turns out the hotel porter wasn't really dead, he just got a little carried away playing hide and seek with his kid!

― James Redd and the Blecchs, Thursday, 14 February 2008 17:21 (sixteen years ago) link

for best romcom?
yes

― James Redd and the Blecchs, Thursday, 14 February 2008 17:22 (sixteen years ago) link

more like the third wheel.

― s1ocki, Thursday, 14 February 2008 17:29 (sixteen years ago) link

Last shot is the ghost of Harry Lime smiling down on them from the top of the Prater Riesenrad.

― James Redd and the Blecchs, Thursday, 14 February 2008 17:31 (sixteen years ago) link

That's the Vienna Big Wheel to you.

― James Redd and the Blecchs, Thursday, 14 February 2008 17:31 (sixteen years ago) link

four months pass...

this thread has that problem where only your serious movie motherfuckers went and saw it.

― El Tomboto, Thursday, 19 June 2008 09:37 (fifteen years ago) link

I went and saw it.

― The stickman from the hilarious "xkcd" comics, Thursday, 19 June 2008 09:38 (fifteen years ago) link

ok well it also has that problem then.

― El Tomboto, Thursday, 19 June 2008 09:39 (fifteen years ago) link

well i tried to get a discussion started about east german prostitutes but nobody went there with me

― Tracer Hand, Thursday, 19 June 2008 09:53 (fifteen years ago) link

well the one in this film isn't going anywhere good before the wall comes down but as far as that's concerned we could just as well as be talking about that clooney/soderbergh noir number

― El Tomboto, Thursday, 19 June 2008 09:56 (fifteen years ago) link

and you know not to holla but I couldn't give a shit less for a minute about how the "stasi creep" is "sanctified" or whatever, lots of antiheros have gotten by with much much more in the way of redemption for a lot less sand

― El Tomboto, Thursday, 19 June 2008 09:57 (fifteen years ago) link

i think part of it is that most brits and americans know jack shit about east germany and so this film functions as a de facto history lesson whether it likes it or not; it fails in this regard i think, but it's not fair to look at it only from that pov

― Tracer Hand, Thursday, 19 June 2008 10:03 (fifteen years ago) link

my biggest complaint: no musical numbers

― Tracer Hand, Thursday, 19 June 2008 10:12 (fifteen years ago) link

which is where "top secret" really pulls away from the pack

― Tracer Hand, Thursday, 19 June 2008 10:13 (fifteen years ago) link

this movie really needed Omar Sharif.

― Alfred, Lord Sotosyn, Thursday, 19 June 2008 11:46 (fifteen years ago) link

And Hildegard Knef.

― James Redd and the Blecchs, Thursday, 19 June 2008 13:52 (fifteen years ago) link

most brits and americans know jack shit about east germany and so this film functions as a de facto history lesson

right, and I think it's especially cheeky to complain about the treatment of the protagonist here when like 2/3rds of the entire anglophone cinematic tradition is about those colorful rapey blood-soaked sociopaths who built our respective countries into what they are today, america esp. with all them westerns (also I finally watched gangs of ny lol)

― El Tomboto, Thursday, 19 June 2008 16:55 (fifteen years ago) link

i complain about those too!

― Tracer Hand, Thursday, 19 June 2008 17:07 (fifteen years ago) link

though the usual western trope is the exact reverse, right? the law-abiding man of peace who circumstances force to become a killer in order to protect his family/town/etc

― Tracer Hand, Thursday, 19 June 2008 17:10 (fifteen years ago) link

"You are a good-looking boy. You have big, broad shoulders. But he is a man. And it takes more than big, broad shoulders to make a man."

― James Redd and the Blecchs, Thursday, 19 June 2008 17:13 (fifteen years ago) link

what the fuck does this have to with the fact that the protagonist's evolution into a Rilke-loving quasi-softie is convincing?

― Alfred, Lord Sotosyn, Thursday, 19 June 2008 18:24 (fifteen years ago) link

I saw it. I liked it, though I had a little more trouble with the believability of Dreyman, rather than Wiesler.

― clotpoll, Thursday, 19 June 2008 19:02 (fifteen years ago) link

one month passes...

fukk all y'all i CRIED REAL TEARS at the end of this

― Just got offed, Thursday, 14 August 2008 17:00 (fifteen years ago) link

one year passes...

so this is showing on the big screen here soon - worth seeing? didn't want to go through the thread for fear of spoilers. should be noted I'm not a big fan of calculated shmaltz (I did cry in theaters during A.I. though)

― 囧 (dyao), Wednesday, 9 December 2009 09:52 (fourteen years ago) link

it's pretty good, looks really nice, and obv the historical setting is fascinating. but maybe leave 10 mins before the end if you don't like schmaltz :)

― jabba hands, Wednesday, 9 December 2009 09:57 (fourteen years ago) link

haha - not sure how the people I would be seeing it with would take it. I'll tell them I need to make some stock trades

― 囧 (dyao), Wednesday, 9 December 2009 09:59 (fourteen years ago) link

yes it's good. leave when they stop steaming envelopes because maybe you are allergic to envelopes.

― wmlynch, Wednesday, 9 December 2009 18:46 (fourteen years ago) link

i liked this a lot, saw it in the cinema and really loved it until the end, which is pretty shit. But apart from that enjoyable.

― Pedro Paramore (jim), Wednesday, 9 December 2009 18:48 (fourteen years ago) link

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