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Tuesday, 03 April 2007 15:43 |
By ANNA LEE
ìThe Lives of Othersî is the best film I have seen all year. Its emotional quality and depth get under the skin and linger like the smell of an interrogatorís cigarette. This is a story no one will be able to forget. I walked out of the theater feeling like a slightly different person.
German director Florian Henckel-Donnersmarck wrote, directed and co-produced this superb film. Though he is a relatively new director, this film won the Oscar for best Foreign Language Film and swept many of the European film awards.
| Ulrich Mühe stars as a Stasi interrogator who has his life changed.
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The
film, set in the 1980s, also features the precise and realistic acting
of three award-winning German actors. Ulrich Mühe plays the
protagonist, Hauptmann Wiesler, an officer in the Stasi- the East
German secret police≠ ó who finds his life altered profoundly after he
runs a surveillance operation on a prominent writer, played by
Sebastian Koch. The writerís drug-addled girlfriend, played by Martina
Gedeck, also comes off as emotionally believable. This cast performs
together flawlessly.
Wieslerís
specialty is interrogation and spying. At the beginning of the film he
tortures a prisoner for hours by keeping him sleep-deprived and waiting
for him to say something incriminating. Wiesler asks the man, ìYou
think we imprison people on a whim?î The man says yes. That assertion
alone, replies Wiesler, would be enough to put the man in prison.
Soon, though, Weisler, through watching ó and eventually empathizing with ó his targets, finds himself changing.
The plot is
relatively straightforward, but Henckel-Donnersmarck gives this film
great emotional and thematic depth and beautiful cinematography.
An acquaintance told me he was worried about seeing the film because it might be too slow.
It isnít. There
was never a moment in this film where I got bored and let my mind
wander. There was not a moment where I wasnít right there with the
characters, holding my breath over the next moment.
Despite the overall dark subject matter, there are also moments of humanity that add some much-needed levity to the film.
Not only does it
have the necessary suspense to keep it going, but this film also
manages to take viewers from lifeís harsh realities with an honest and
unflinching eye while managing to sweep the audience up and take us to
the soaring heights of hope in human nature.
ìThe Lives of
Othersî shows that there can always be redemption and forgiveness for
the harshest of sinners. Viewers may find it the perfect film to see
before Easter.
This movie ends
up finishing its journey through the darkness of a police state with a
cathartic ray of light. Not every ending need be tragic.
ï
Anna Lee is a senior in mass communication at UNC Asheville.
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