♥♥♥♥♥♥
+ Best Movie of the Decade
+ Best Movie of the Year
+ Best Debut Movie of the Year + Best Dollar Return of the Year: 38.6 Times its Cost + Best German Movie of the Year + Best Mega-hit Movie of the Year + Best Spy Thriller of the Year
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| Intimate snapshots and one of the men carrying out the invasive surveillance make up this unmemorable poster for Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck's The Lives of Others |
In 1984 East Germany is under full surveillance: by its own colossal state apparatus. The minister of culture demands dirt on a prominent theater writer, so that he can have the man's actress girlfriend to himself in peace. But the spy who has to do the dirty surveillance work gets in doubt of the validity of his tasks.
The Lives of Others is written and directed by feature-debuting German master filmmaker Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck (Never Look Away/Werk ohne Autor (2018)). He has managed to erect a monumental film of the destructive Stasi police and their methods in the long defunct East German state, the DDR. The film is an incredibly well-made and energetic grappling with history. It boggles the mind that East Germans helped to install not just one but two of the most horrifying regimes that the world saw created in the 20th century, of which the first, the Nazi ideology, still seems the most destructive human endeavor ever committed by man.
Martina Gedeck (I'm Off Then/Ich Bin Dann Mal Weg (2015)) and Sebastian Koch (Bel Canto (2018)) are excellent as the couple who get harassed; so is Thomas Thieme (Fritz Lang (2016)) as the feared minister. Ulrich Mühe (Engelchen (1996)) as the spy gives a formidable performance as a man who is controlled through and through, who suddenly makes an individual stride. In this way The Lives of Others is a beautiful film of the human ability to change and improve, but it is also about the dissolution of an inhumane ideology of submissive all-encompassing control and surveillance as caused by the beauty of music, as an early scene conveys so persuasively. The Lives of Others is a masterpiece for the ages.
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Cost: 2 mil. $
Box office: 77.3 mil. $
= Mega-hit (returned 38.6 times the cost)
[The Lives of Others premiered 15 March (Berlin, Germany) and runs 137 minutes. Donnersmarck's thought up the film inspired by a recount of a discussion between Maxim Gorky and Lenin, in which Lenin admitted the disturbing fact that his office did violence against the people in pursuing their ideals. Donnersmarck has stated: "I suddenly had this image in my mind of a person sitting in a depressing room with earphones on his head and listening in to what he supposes is the enemy of the state and the enemy of his ideas, and what he is really hearing is beautiful music that touches him. I sat down and in a couple of hours had written the treatment." He wrote the script at the Heiligenkreuz Abbey, where his uncle served as the abbot. Shooting took place in Berlin, Germany from October - December 2004. The film opened #36 to a 213k $ first weekend in 9 theaters in North America, where it peaked at #15 and in 259 theaters (different weeks), playing an impressive 31 weeks and grossing 11.2 mil. $ (14.5 % of the total gross). The biggest markets was the film's home country Germany with 19.1 mil. $ (24.7 %). North America was the 2nd biggest, and 3rd biggest was France with 10.7 mil. $ (13.8%). Roger Ebert gave the film a 4/4 star review, equal to its rating here. Criticisms lashed against the film by others include that Donnersmarck was wrong to create a sympathetic Stasi protagonist and that the playwright character is unlikely in the hard communist regime. The film won the Best Foreign Film Oscar, was nominated for a Golden Globe, won 1/5 BAFTA nominations, a César award and a David di Donatello award, 3/6 European Film award nominations, an Independent Spirit award, 7/11 German Film award nominations and countless other honors. On IMDb's user-generated Top 250, the film currently sits at #57, between Sunset Boulevard (1950) and Dr. Strangelove (1964). The film has has had influence in the debate against mass surveillance in Israel and the US. Donnersmarck and Mühe were successfully sued for libel by Mühe's 2nd wife for an interview in which it was stated that she had informed on him during their 6 years of marriage in the DDR. - Although 254 pages of government records supported the claim, the woman's controller came out and stated that she had not know that she had been talking to a Stasi agent and that many things had been made up. Donnersmarck returned with The Tourist (2010). Mühe returned in Das Geheimnis von St. Ambrose (2006, TV movie), Peer Gynt (2006, TV movie) and theatrically in My Führer/Mein Führer - Die Wirklich Wahrste Wahrheit über Adolf Hitler (2007). The Lives of Others is certified fresh at 92 % with a 8.3/10 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]
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