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'Lives of Others,' a Glimpse at East Germany

The Lives of Others is a potent narrative set in East Germany before the Berlin Wall fell.

Directed by first-time filmmaker Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, its theme is the effects of political surveillance on the watchers and the watched. It turns that story into a python-tight embrace of tension and emotion that proves that moral dilemmas can be the most intensely dramatic quandries of all.

Von Donnersmarck has set his film in the East Germany of 1984. It was a time when the terrifying Stasi, the secret police, made it their business to use an extensive network of spies and surveillance to know every secret thing about their citizens. The film is an inside look at how a society set up to discover and prey upon human weakness makes everyone a potential suspect and destroys everything it touches.

The Lives of Others does all this beautifully, but it is too well-acted a film, too meticulously plotted and carefully directed, to be satisfied with that alone. It's also too smart to be content with telling anything like a familiar story. Instead it places its key characters in high-stakes predicaments where what they are forced to wager is their talent, their very lives, even their souls.

The Lives of Others shows what happens when the state's top wiretapper, a captain in the Stasi, investigates the lives of East Germany's premier playwright and his actress mistress.

When you wiretap as conscientiously as the captain, you find out all sorts of things, much more than you set out to learn. The captain's increasing empathy for the couple he spends so much time eavesdropping on produces complex and shattering results no one could have predicted.

Gradually, the film's interlinked character studies reveal a high-tension society rife with jealousy, idealism and betrayal — all intensified by the fatal corruption of the system. To create such a subtle yet gripping world, a world where the difference between meaningful action and senseless heroics is anyone's guess, is an accomplishment worthy of an Oscar, and more.

Copyright 2022 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

Kenneth Turan is the film critic for the Los Angeles Times and NPR's Morning Edition, as well as the director of the Los Angeles Times Book Prizes. He has been a staff writer for the Washington Post and TV Guide, and served as the Times' book review editor.

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SOMOS CONNECTICUT es una iniciativa de Connecticut Public, la emisora local de NPR y PBS del estado, que busca elevar nuestras historias latinas y expandir programación que alza y informa nuestras comunidades latinas locales. Visita CTPublic.org/latino para más reportajes y recursos. Para noticias, suscríbase a nuestro boletín informativo en ctpublic.org/newsletters.

The independent journalism and non-commercial programming you rely on every day is in danger.

If you’re reading this, you believe in trusted journalism and in learning without paywalls. You value access to educational content kids love and enriching cultural programming.

Now all of that is at risk.

Federal funding for public media is under threat and if it goes, the impact to our communities will be devastating.

Together, we can defend it. It’s time to protect what matters.

Your voice has protected public media before. Now, it’s needed again. Learn how you can protect the news and programming you depend on.