If film directors can double as teachers, Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck is modern film's Aristotle and his first film, The Lives of Others, is the lecture that inspires Alexander the Great to take action. It's also the best directorial debut since Truffaut's The 400 Blows, and unequivocally the best film of 2006.
A finalist for the Best Foreign Film Oscar, Others opens deep in the cellars of a 1980s East German jail, where Secret Service Agent Wiesler (Ulrich Mühe) is methodically interrogating a prisoner. Wiesler is a man completely devoted to his job, and thus to his state. He wears the muted uniform of the socialist serviceman with precision; his meals consist of mush mixed with colored paste.
But as Wiesler begins surveillance on writer Georg Dreyman (Sebastian Koch), things begin to change. Exposed to Brecht and Beethoven, the agent's steely gray eyes begin to soften. Does Wiesler realize that in devotion to the state, his self has entered drought? And what is it that Wiesler is missing?
Von Donnersmarck offers many answers. Does Wiesler want what Dreyman has-a pretty girlfriend, a publicly recognized talent, a furnished, comfortable apartment? Does he simply want exposure to the culture that the government won't allow across the wall, the chance to prove himself intellectually? Or, as is most interesting, is it a combination of the two-a desire for contact and interaction with Dreyman himself? In the context of the time and the setting, it is precisely this lack of person-to-person contact that Wiesler's person-to-state relationship has left most lacking.
Mühe and Koch hardly seem to be acting. Martina Gedeck, as Dreyman's girlfriend Christa-Maria, is blessed with both elegant looks and overwhelming grace.
But the success of the film comes to rest firmly at von Donnersmarck's feet.
By the time the wall has fallen and Dreyman's popularity has outlived socialism, Wiesler has landed back in the service of the state. There is a time when it seems like the two may meet face-to-face, but Dreyman, attempting to track the former agent down, spots Wiesler delivering mail and holds back.
It's a bold decision to place his two main characters so physically close to one another and never allow them to meet, but it's also the choice of a director with clear vision.
In the end, communication between Wiesler and Dreyman is confined to moments of individual realization, like when the writer reads his declassified file and puts a face to Wiesler's code name. For Dreyman to have access to mass information is representative of the transformation to a new Germany for all involved.
But in the last moments of the film, as Wiesler spots Dreyman's latest book in the window of a store and spends a chunk of his minute salary to purchase it, it's not only the nation's step forward that von Donnersmarck chronicles. It's also the shift from one utopian egality to another, the movement towards the ideal democracy that may or may not be ideal. In a world where a doctrine of representative government faces heat from all sides, The Lives of Others sits and watches.
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