The terror apparatus of Nazi Germany and the corrupt communism of Soviet Russia are familiar topics for filmgoers. ""The Lives of Others,"" the German winner of the 2006 Best Foreign Language Film, focuses on a less frequently filmed regime: The German Democratic Republic (East Germany), which, during the Cold War, was like a slightly tempered hybrid of the two. The unbelievably named Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck's film about the Stasi, the East German secret police, is a meditative examination of the unexpectedly human side of surveillance and of an oppressive state quietly crumbling from within.
""The Lives of Others"" is set in something close to George Orwell's ""1984,"" as well as the literal one, when the collapse of the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact still seemed nowhere in sight. Gerd Wiesler (Ulrich MA¼he), a grave and weary-looking Stasi agent, opens the film by endorsing sleep deprivation as an excellent interrogation technique to a class of trainees. When one gingerly questions the method's humaneness, Wiesler doesn't say anything; he simply marks his name with a severe red X, leaving little doubt in the audience's mind of how his young career is going to go. It's clear that the Stasi, which was recognized as one of the world's most effective intelligence agencies while it existed, had nothing to do with the glamorous spy life and everything to do with cold, banal efficiency.
Soon, Wiesler is given an unusual case: to spy on Georg Dreyman (Antonio Banderas look-alike Sebastian Koch), who is celebrated as one of the GDR's best and most loyally communist playwrights. Dreyman's supposed connections to capitalists and West Germany seem dubious at best, but Wiesler obligingly wires Dreyman's entire house with all the apparent difficulty and moral compunction most would give to filing paperwork. The real reason for the surveillance—a senior official wanting to find a way to dispose of Dreyman, so he will be free to pursue his live-in girlfriend, famous actress Christa-Maria Sieland (Martina Gedeck)—is soon revealed. But it's not long before Dreyman has, in fact, begun to formulate some critical opinions about the government's poor treatment of dissidents and distortion of facts—or before the seemingly incorruptible Wiesler has started to feel sympathetic as he listens in on Dreyman and Sieland's lives.
As Wiesler begins to lie on his reports in order to protect Dreyman, the inner weaknesses of the East German government, as well as the furtive hopes of the East German people, become clearer. No one in this gray land of decaying Bauhaus bleakness is as definite and unwavering as they want to be: Sieland, a Teutonic heroine of the stage, relies on illegal prescription drugs; Wiesler, the monkish bureaucrat, employs a call-service prostitute and begs her to stay with him; Wiesler's boss grimly tells a junior Stasi worker his career is over after he tells a joke about Chairman Erich Honecker—only to laugh hysterically at the look on the poor young man's face and proceed to tell his own Honecker joke.
Like the Nazi at the end of ""The Pianist,"" Wiesler risks himself to protect those he will never know after being moved to tears by Dreyman's pleas for a fairer regime. While the film rambles a bit in finding a suitable spot to end, the final result is a moving commemoration of the freedom that was nearer than these characters ever knew. ""The Lives of Others"" is a testament to how any two humans will, eventually, find a way to connect, and how every wall, eventually, falls.
