The Lives of Others. An amazing brilliant lovely sad film! It is set in East Germany, the central character is a diligent official in the Stasi, the secret police. Wiesler's new assignment is to track the life of a free-thinking but state-sanctioned dramatist Georg Dreyman, and his lover, the actress Christa-Maria Sieland. They are the state's own artists, the state's intellectuals. Dreyman has been recognized by Margot Honecker herself (it comes up as events unfold). But Wiesler gets drawn into their lives, absorbed by their internal conflicts and their love for each other. He realizes that the state that he's dedicated his life to is corrupt, especially as embodied by the minister who's ordered the new assignment for his own purposes...
It's a beautiful film. One of my colleagues grew up in East Germany and he said it was so very realistic too, in it's depiction of circumstances at the time...uncomfortably accurate in the atmosphere, the look and feel of a totalitarian state. The amazing bit is that it's apparently the director's first film (Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck).
Do see it!
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