Das Leben der Anderen
I have to admit that it’s a really bad habit not to watch films in their entirety, but stop here and there. Somehow it destroys the flow of the film and unfortunately I had to do this for this great film *_*
Honestly I have been a little bit surprised that Shii said he’s not interested in this, mainly because he doesn’t know anything about the DDR back then. But I don’t know much about the DDR either, however I’m kind of interested because I have lived in East-Berlin near the Karl-Marx-Allee after the downfall of the wall, and everything was still heavily influenced by that time. In my opinion, the atmosphere is still there.
Admittedly, I think this film has the weakness of being slightly unrealistic – it doesn’t really make clear why exactly the protagonist has changed. Listening to a piano sonata definitely is not enough to convince me really. The second thing that bugged me a little bit was the talk about ‘good people’. It’s probably a personal thing, but I simply do not like the talk about ‘good’ and ‘bad’, as most people who talk about that are horrible hypocrites.
Aside from that, the film is plain gorgeous: It has an exceptionary atmosphere thanks to the soundtrack and a marvelous Ulrich Mühe. At the beginning, I was seriously scared by that look of his and the way he talked. It makes the naive me to realize that the Stasi back then was really scary.
Another striking characteristic of this film is that I have not felt bored at all. Usually, german films have always had this kind of boring and sad atmosphere. This film, far from being lively, is suspenseful and at the same time touching and scary enough to keep me interest all the way. Especially the end of the film is rather slow-paced, I suppose, but I haven’t thought of it as slow at all. And despite the lack of realism I have already mentioned, I found it the end very moving.