Oscar nominee: Best Foreign Language Film
A horrific political drama, but also strangely funny at times, The Lives of Others is probably the strongest contender for the foreign film award after Pan’s Labyrinth. I still hold the latter as my favourite, but I was more impressed by this German period piece than I expected beforehand. It’s slow-paced, but never boring, and the acting is wonderful. The plot revolves around a Stasi surveillance officer - superbly played by Ulrich Muhe - who, having no real life of his own, finds himself getting too close to the lives of his subjects and begins to omit obvious acts of dissent from his reports. More than being about a man who has a change of heart, however, it seems to me that this film is about the potential power of art in contributing to social change. One of the very few scenes in which Muhe’s character shows any emotion is when he breaks into tears while listening in on his subject, a famous playwright, playing a Beethoven sonata on the piano. The film is also about the self-fulfilling nature of totalitarian paranoia; if you treat people like criminals, that’s exactly what they will become. I’d elaborate on that, but I don’t want to spoil too much of the plot.
I’m actually having trouble getting this film out of my head. Perhaps in part because I saw it on the same day that the Swedish Legislative Council approved the government’s wiretapping proposal. I used to think such a thing wouldn’t be possible in this country, but by now this just feels like further proof of the new right-wing government’s disdain for its citizens. The Lives of Others may depict a society now gone, but it doesn’t feel all that far away. Isn’t it kind of ironic how all those things that used to characterize totalitarian socialist regimes in the ‘East’ - unwarranted wiretapping, torture and detention without trial - are now becoming all the more common in Western democracies run by right-wing governments? There might be a lesson in here somewhere.
By the way, last month this film was awarded a Guldbagge (golden beetle) as the best foreign film at the Swedish equivalent of the Oscars. Well deserved, since Pan’s Labyrinth didn’t come here until this week.
