Espionage makes a comeback in East Berlin

Given the politics of our day, with its warrantless wiretaps and acts dubbed PATRIOT, it should come as little surprise that surveillance is a hit theme among makers of good film and television. Michael Haneke's Caché (2005) and David Simon's masterpiece HBO series The Wire are only two fine examples. Now, you can add The Lives of Others (Das Leben der Anderen), a stellar debut effort from writer-director Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, to that august list.

Set in East Berlin in 1984, The Lives of Others opens with a lecture describing the meticulous and unyielding methods employed by the Stasi, the East German secret police, in interrogating political prisoners. The lecturer is Captain Gerd Wiesler (Ulrich Mühe, flawlessly), a man very much ensconced in the system of torture and espionage. Wiesler is assigned to spy on a prominent artistic couple: the poet, author, playwright, and first class bohème Georg Dreyman (Sebastian Koch) and stage actress Christa-Maria Sieland (Martina Gedeck), a name that might have raised a few eyebrows in the officially atheist German Democratic Republic. At first, Wiesler applies his usual uncompromising technique. His reports are precise and his ear, enhanced by listening devices in the couple's apartment, is without error. Simply by listening to the targets move about the home, he produces a perfect scale blueprint. He is, in somewhat stereotypical fashion, the very portrait of what has is derisively described as German efficiency.

But, as Wiesler listens in on the lives of these others, he begins to lose the game of "don't flinch" he has long played with his own conscience. Exposed to the open-minded world of artists, he finds himself protecting the couple, deceiving superiors, and risking his career for the benefit of his quarry.

But, if the motivation for Wiesler's transformation went no deeper than an unexplained fondness for Dreyman and Sieland, we would have a decidedly unimpressive feature on our hands. After all, considering the East German proclivity for banning those artists who did not follow the strictures of socialist realism and political correctness, Wiesler has, no doubt, spied on other artists. However, Donnersmarck's script is sophisticated. In moments of powerful nuance something altogether unexpected creeps onto the screen and, unassumingly, envelops the plot in a mist so fine it is hardly visible. In a curious and understated way, The Lives of Others is a love story.

It begins when Wiesler witnesses Sieland's performance in one of Dreyman's plays, it escalates as he observes the indignities thrust upon her by Minister of Arts Bruno Hempf, and it culminates when Wiesler accosts her one evening in a diner under the not entirely false guise of adoring fan. Wiesler, the consummate voyeur, suddenly realizes that to live a watchful life is not enough. He must act.

It is difficult to fully accept Donnersmarck's celebration of the reformed Wiesler who, despite his beneficence toward the couple, is hardly blameless when it comes to their tragedy and, one suspects, those of others. Donnersmarck may be succumbing to a defense popular among Germans rightly disgusted by their nation's past, namely the idea that those who committed vile deeds were simply following orders, or caught in a system that they were powerless to oppose.

However, troublesome though that interpretation may be, there is little other reason to fault the movie, which has been nominated for the Academy Award for best foreign film. The screenplay is peppered with a caustic wit that seems, somehow, entirely at home in a film that could not be more serious or sobering were it a chronicle of a mortician's therapy sessions. Also of note is the multifaceted score by Gabriel Yared and Stéphane Moucha, which figures heavily in the plot.

Add to this a collection of first-rate performances, Donnersmarck' appropriately discreet camera, and politically charged subject matter of daily increasing relevance, and The Lives of Others emerges as an example of the most brilliantly realized drama. A complete work that satisfies intellectually and affectively.