Das Leben der Anderen (The Lives of Others)

He sits like a man taking a hearing test, big headphones clamped over his ears, his body and face frozen, listening for a faraway sound. His name is Gerd Wiesler, and he is a captain in the Stasi, the notorious secret police of East Germany. The year is, appropriately, 1984, and he is Big Brother, watching. He sits in an attic day after day, night after night, spying on the people in the flat below.
The flat is occupied by a playwright named Dreyman (Sebastian Koch) and his mistress, the actress Christa-Maria Sieland (Martina Gedeck). Wiesler (Ulrich Muehe) first saw Dreyman at the opening of one of his plays, where he was informed by a colleague that Dreyman was a valuable man: "One of our only writers who is read in the West and is loyal to our government." How can that be? Wiesler wonders. Dreyman is good-looking, successful, with a beautiful lover; he must be getting away with something. Driven by suspicion, or perhaps by envy or simple curiosity, Wiesler has Dreyman's flat wired and begins an official eavesdropping inquiry.
He doesn't find a shred of evidence that Dreyman is disloyal. Not even in whispers. Not even in guarded allusions. Not even during pillow talk. The man obviously believes in the East German version of socialism, and the implication is that not even the Stasi can believe that. They are looking for dissent and subversion because, in a way, they think a man like Dreyman should be guilty of them. Perhaps they do not believe in East Germany themselves, but have simply chosen to play for the winning team.
Wiesler is a fascinating character. His face is a mask, trained by his life to reflect no emotion. Sometimes not even his eyes move. As played in Muehe's performance of infinite subtlety, he watches Dreyman as a cat awaits a mouse. And he begins to internalize their lives -- easy, because he has no life of his own, no lover, no hobby, no distraction from his single-minded job.
Although the movie won the best foreign-language film Oscar of 2006, you may not have seen it, so I will repress certain developments. I will say that Wiesler arrives at a choice, when his piggish superior officer, the government minister Bruno Hempf (Thomas Thieme), develops a lust for Christa-Maria and orders Wiesler to pin something, anything, on Dreyman so that his rival will be eliminated. But there is nothing to pin on him. A loyal spy must be true to his trade, and now Wiesler is asked to be false to prove his loyalty.
The thing is, Wiesler has no one he can really talk to. He lives in a world of such paranoia that the slightest slip can be disastrous. Consider a scene in the Stasi cafeteria when a young officer unwisely cracks an anti-government joke; Wiesler goes through the motions of laughter, and then coldly asks for the man's name. The same could happen to Wiesler. So as he proceeds through his crisis, he has no one to confide in, and there is no interior monologue to inform us of his thoughts. There is only that blank face, and the smallest indications of what he might be thinking. And then instinctive decisions that choose his course for him.
The Berlin Wall falls in 1989 (the event is seen here), and the story continues for few more years to an ironic and surprisingly satisfactory conclusion. But the movie is relevant today, as our government ignores habeas corpus, practices secret torture, and asks for the right to wiretap and eavesdrop on its citizens. Such tactics did not save East Germany; they destroyed it, by making it a country its most loyal citizens could no longer believe in. Driven by the specter of aggression from without, it countered it with aggression from within, as sort of an anti-toxin. Fearing that its citizens were disloyal, it inspired them to be. True, its enemies were real. But the West never dropped the bomb, and East Germany and the other Soviet republics imploded after essentially bombing themselves.
"The Lives of Others" is a powerful but quiet film, constructed of hidden thoughts and secret desires. It begins with Wiesler teaching a class in the theory and practice of interrogation; one chilling detail is that suspects are forced to sit on their hands, so that the chair cushion can be saved for possible use by bloodhounds. It shows how the Wall finally fell, not with a bang, but because of whispers.

Elementarteilchen (Elementary Particles)

I've seen a couple dozen German movies over the years, but do not know German media--- TV, books, pop movies, etc. Maybe 'Atomised' is standard fare in Germany? But to me it was unusual. The story was not predictable. It was not yet another version of the same old things. Maybe it is in its homeland, but not here in the UK. So 'Atomised' was a bit exciting and engaging simply for its freshness and uniqueness. And--- it was also very well acted, and the story was compelling as well. So all that adds up to a movie that keeps your attention. Not 'nail-biting', perhaps, and maybe not 'on the edge of your seat', but keenly and raptly attentive.

The story is about two half brothers-- Brother number one a brilliant (and eventually Nobel Prize winning) scientist going through a 3-year detour in his comet-rise to genetic engineering stardom. Brother number two, played by the male lead from Tom Tykwer's 'Run Lola Run', Moritz Bleibtreu, is a charming and probably (?) good looking school teacher--- married, with a baby in the house. But he is a very disturbed sex addict, in the worst meaning of the term. He's also a writer--- maybe an essayist, maybe short stories--- the movie doesn't make that very clear. But it does show him as a neo-Nazi of sorts, producing well-written but unpublishable tracts that rail against blacks and other 'sub races' (sic).

Brother two is incapable of receiving any love or happiness or fulfilment from his wife, and he makes lewd and overtly sexual advances towards his 15 year-old female students. As a teenage boy, in a flashback, he even has a sexual encounter with his own sleeping mother. Very creepy. Worse, if that's possible, he brutally smashes a cat to death during his sexual 'assault' on his mother, simply because the cat closed its eyes when he reached sexual climax--- indicating, evidently, that the cat was judging the boy as disgusting. For that, the adult brother two recalls with a satisfied rage, the ****ing cat had to die.

Was the darkness of brother two over the top? Was it too dark? I don't know. It felt realistic, but was the portrayal intrinsic to the story? I had sympathy for brother two--- he was obviously 'lost', in the worst way. he cried a lot, and the look of despair and horror in his eyes was so intense that one had to feel compassion for the guy. But then the cat killing episode turned me off, and turned me against him, so I felt horror AT him, rather than WITH him.

The women in the movie were fantastic actresses. Brother two meets a woman who is probably 4 or 5 years older than he, and she too is a sex addict. She takes him to weird 'leather bar' kind of sex clubs, and they trade partners and engage in wild and sordid sex. But she does seem to care for him, maybe even love him. Brother two and this lady certainly seem to need each other--- and we get the feeling that they are, somehow, very good for each other. But then she has had some disease of the bones for a long while, but it had been in remission--- but she had not told brother two about it. The disease flares up, and she is left paralyzed in the legs for life--- and we suspect maybe her life is going to be short, as well. Brother two is confused, and while he eventually decides to take the woman in, and live with his love, even if she is crippled, he dithers long enough for her to get depressed and kill herself. Brother two goes permanently nuts, hallucinates his dead lover's presence (oddly, even though he is halucinating, and could therefore dream up any pleasant reality he wanted, no matter how 'rosy' or fantastic it might be, he STILL chooses to see her crippled, in her recently acquired wheelchair, rather than as a whole person), and spends the rest of his life in the loony bin.

Brother one, meanwhile, meets childhood sweetheart Annabelle, played extremely well by Franka Potente, also of 'Run Lola Run' (and small parts in 'The Bourne Identity' and 'The Bourne Supremeacy', as well as the lead in 'The Princess and the Warrior'). Potente is amazing here. This is obviously the kind of part she does best, because here she was believable, compelling, and wonderful. Her character also has some disease, and when she gets pregnant by bother one, she has to have an abortion and a hysterectomy. But it all turns out well in the end--- and she and brother one live happily ever after.

Whew! Oh wait--- the brothers' mother is shown in flashbacks as a crazy and irresponsible slut, who is probably singlehandedly responsible for the brothers' hesitations and mental problems. Interestingly, Michel Houellebecq's main intention in creating the character of the mother was to portray his own mother's hedonistic attitude during his childhood. He had been abandoned with his grandmother, while the mother pursued her hippie style of living, sex and self-pleasure being her biggest priorities.

The movie is not perfect, but it does get points for being innovative, and new. For me, anyway, it was a fresh and intriguing look into a believable world of some very intense people. Creepy in parts--- redemptive and inspirational in other parts. I wouldn't want to see this kind of movie every week--- but once in a while this dark and intense artsy look at things is probably good. Like eating fiber in your diet. I gave this an 8 out of 10.