Three years ago I watched Florian Henkel von Donnersmarck’s film “Work Without Authorship” and I really liked it, since then I was always going to see his debut film “The Lives of Others” / Das Leben der Anderen, 2006, about which I read and heard a lot of good things, and now, finally, I got together and watched. The film tells about how the Stasi supervised the work of cultural bodies and their workers during the GDR. In the film, we see not only how this is done, but also why it sometimes happened, and here comes into play, as often happens in life, personal interests. The action begins in 1984.
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The main character of the film is the captain of the Stasi Gerd Wiesler (Ulrich Mue), who receives the task to follow the playwright Georg Draiman, who seems to be considered trustworthy, but whose girlfriend is the famous actress Christo-Maria Zeland (Martina Gedek) - put his eye on the Minister of Culture Bruno Hempf (Thomas Thiem), so it is urgent to find dirt on Draiman to completely take possession of his mistress, yes, he is, he says, and so unreliable and sympathizes Zap. The apartment is stuffed with listening devices and video cameras. At first, we see an impeccable Stasi worker sharing with the cadets of the special school the knowledge of how to conduct interrogations in order to break a person and squeeze the necessary information from the interrogator. At first, he watches and clearly records everything he sees and hears. But gradually some changes suddenly begin to occur in his mind, he is imbued with a clear sympathy for this couple. At first he stops writing everything he hears. The final break comes after a friend of the playwright, director Yersk, who was suspended from work seven years ago and effectively banned from the profession, kills himself. Shortly before that, Jerska gave Draiman for his birthday notes of the play “The Sonata of a Good Man”, which Draiman plays after learning about the death of a friend, and which touches Wiesler to tears. After that, he decides to write an article about suicides in the GDR, information about which is carefully hidden, and publish it in Germany. And then everyone begins to walk on the edge – both Dreyman and his friends, and Wiesler, who hides this activity, presenting it as writing a play dedicated to the 40th anniversary of the GDR. However, the clouds are thickening - first, Christa-Maria is arrested for buying a drug, searches are carried out at Draiman's apartment, but they do not find anything, since she does not initially give out the place where the typewriter is hidden. But then Wiesler’s boss, who is already a little distrustful of him, because he senses that something is wrong there, instructs him to conduct an interrogation, where she still issues a stash and even signs a consent to cooperate. She is released, carried out a second search and again nothing is found, because Wiesler managed to get there before the others and was able to take the machine. However, Christa-Maria, having decided that she had ruined her friend, runs out into the street and is hit by a car. Wiesler’s boss, realizing that he had outsmarted him, sent him to work as a postal censor, his career came to an end. A few years later, the GDR regime is coming to an end. Draiman, once at the next performance of his play, met a former minister, asked why he was not followed, learns that he was followed and even very much, after studying the documents of his case in the Stasi archive, where you could access, learns who was actually his savior and is looking for him, but does not dare to speak. A couple of years later, his book, The Good Man Sonata, comes out, as does the play he mentions to an agent codenamed HGW XX/7, Wiesler, walking past a bookstore, sees an advertisement, walks in and discovers it, a book he buys, of course.
I must say that I liked the film, the acting works are very good, especially, of course, the performer of the role of Wiesler Ulrich Mue. I will not discuss how plausible the plot, how possible was the transformation of a Stasi agent into a normal person, in life everything happens and sometimes some events in life can actually cause serious changes, including in the worldview of a person, and this person was quite honest and at first very honestly served as an agent, but nothing human is still not alien to people, if they have not lost their human appearance.
