Das Leben der Anderen

I went to see Das Leben der Anderen (The Lives of Others) tonight, the German winner of the 2007 best foreign language Oscar.

East Berlin, November 1984. Five years before its downfall, the communist East-German government ensured its claim to power with a ruthless system of control and surveillance. Party-loyalist Captain Gerd Wiesler (Ulrich Muehe) hopes to boost his career when given the job of collecting evidence against the playwright Georg Dreyman (Sebastian Koch) and his girlfriend, the celebrated theater actress Christa-Maria Sieland. (Martina Gedeck) After all, the "operation" is backed by the highest political circles. What he didn't anticipate, however, was that submerging oneself into the world of the target also changes the surveillance agent. The immersion in the lives of others--in love, literature, free thinking and speech--makes Wiesler acutely aware of the meagerness of his own existence and opens to him a completely new way of life which he has ever more trouble resisting. But the system, once started, cannot be stopped. A dangerous game has begun.

A great movie by director Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck illustrating the importance of freedom. As a student during the early to mid-1980's I visited the German Democratic Republic three times . I could relive the drab atmosphere of that country, and the lack of any freedom that you could feel with every step, in this movie. It was during those visits that I realized how important freedom is, and that I should be thankful to have been born in one of the relatively few free countries in this world.