
At once a political thriller and human
drama, THE LIVES OF OTHERS begins in East Berlin in 1984,
five years before Glasnost and the fall of the Berlin Wall
and ultimately takes us to 1991, in what is now the reunited
Germany. THE LIVES OF OTHERS traces the gradual
disillusionment of Captain Gerd Wiesler (Ulrich Muhe, best
known for his lead roles in Michael Haneke’s FUNNY GAMES and
as Dr. Mengele in Costa-Gavras’ AMEN), a highly skilled
officer who works for the Stasi, East Germany’s all-powerful
secret police. His mission is to spy on a celebrated writer
and actress couple, Georg Dreyman (Sebastian Koch) and
Christa-Maria Sieland (Martina Gedeck).
Five years before
its downfall, the former East- German government (known as
the GDR, German Democratic Republic) ensures its claim to
power with a ruthless system of control and surveillance via
the Stasi, a vast network of informers that at one time
numbered 200,000 out of a population of 17 million. Their
goal is to know everything about “the lives of others.”
Devoted Stasi officer and expert interrogator Wiesler is
given the job of collecting evidence against the famous
playwright Georg Dreyman. The job begins after Lieutenant
Colonel Anton Grubitz (Ulrich Tukur), a former classmate of
Wiesler's who now heads the Culture Department at the State
Security, invites Wiesler to accompany him to the premiere
of the new play by Dreyman, also attended by Minister Bruno
Hempf (Thomas Thieme). Minister
Hempf tells Grubitz that he has doubts about the successful
playwright's loyalty to the SED, the ruling Socialist Unity
Party, and implies that he would approve of a full-scale
surveillance operation. Grubitz, eager to boost his own
political future, entrusts the monitoring, or "Operative
Procedure," to Wiesler, who promises to oversee the case
personally. Wiesler is also convinced that Dreyman cannot
possibly be as loyal to the Party as has always been
assumed.
However, Hempf’s distrust of Dreyman is not politically
motivated. Hempf cannot take his eyes off the attractive
lead actress Christa-Maria Sieland, Dreyman’s girlfriend.
While Dreyman is away from their home, his apartment is
systematically bugged. A neighbor who notices the operation
is forced to keep silent by a personal threat. Wiesler sets
up his surveillance headquarters in the attic of Dreyman's
apartment building, thus beginning Wiesler’s cold and
calculating observation of the lives of the playwright and
his girlfriend. At first Weisler’s observations show that,
unlike most of his artistic peers, Dreyman does not display
any outwardly disdain for the GDR. Dreyman’s position slowly
changes however, as he discovers that Christa-Maria has been
pressured into a sexual relationship with Minister Hempf.
When his close friend, theater director Albert Jerska (Volkmar
Kleinert) is driven to
suicide after seven years of unofficial “blacklisting” by
the government, Dreyman can no longer remain silent about
the GDR. Now determined to alert the outside world about the
conditions of life under the GDR, he begins a plot to place
an article with the famous West German publication Der
Spiegel, exposing the GDR’s policy of covering up the high
suicide rates under the regime.
Wiesler, who has been monitoring all of Dreyman’s
activities, finally has the proof he needs to destroy his
subject and to serve the GDR by foiling Dreyman’s plot. But
Wiesler’s unemotional façade is showing signs of erosion.
While he observes the day-to-day life of Dreyman and
Christa-Maria, he begins to be drawn into their world, which
puts his own position as an impartial agent of the GDR into
question. His immersion in “the lives of others,” in love,
literature and freethinking, also makes Wiesler acutely
aware of the shortfalls of his own existence.
When the anti-GDR article is published, the regime is
thoroughly embarrassed and Grubitz is ordered to discover
the identity of the article’s author. Dreyman is one of the
prime suspects, but Grubitz cannot believe that the
trustworthy Wiesler would have failed to discover the plot.
At the same time, Hempf’s discovery of Christa-Maria’s drug
addiction forces her to expose her lover as the author of
the Der Spiegel article, but a search of Dreyman’s apartment
does not yield any incriminating evidence. Convinced that
Weisler knows more than he is revealing, Grubitz summons him
to interrogate Christa-Maria in order to find the one item
linking Dreyman to the Der Spiegel article. Wiesler, who has
known all along about the source of the article and
purposely failed to disclose the information to his
superiors, must now decide where his allegiances lie. If he
does not extract the information from Christa- Maria, his
life and his career as an elite Stasi officer will
undoubtedly be over. If he succeeds, Dreyman’s fate will be
sealed.
In 1991, two years following the fall of the Berlin Wall,
Dreyman is in for a rude awakening when he runs into
ex-minister Hempf and learns that he had been the subject of
a Stasi surveillance. Immediately afterward, he finds the
cables and microphones secretly installed years earlier
behind the wallpaper in his apartment. In disbelief, he sets
out to research and discovers the different reality of his
past, which not only has a profound impact on his life but
also surprises him with shocking revelations.
©
2006 Sony Classics. . All rights reserved.
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