The Lives of Others/Das Leben der Anderen (2006) - Donnersmarck stuns the world with defining film of the evils of complete state control

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+ 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

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.

Related posts:

 

2006 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED III] 

Top 10: Best German movies 

2006 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED II] 

The 2000s in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess 

2006 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED I]

Watch Donnersmarck receive the Best Foreign Film Oscar - and a fun bit by the year's host Ellen DeGeneres in a video here

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.]

What do you think of The Lives of Others?

The Debt (2010) - The Nazi war criminal thriller is back in a welcome return

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The slick but not very informative poster for John Madden's The Debt

QUICK REVIEW:

In 1965 the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad sent three agents to East-Berlin to assassinate an infamous Nazi war criminal, the Surgeon of Nuremberg, who was then a practicing gynecologist.

The Debt lifts the rich inheritance from Nazi war criminal thrillers like The Marathon Man (1976) and The Boys from Brazil (1978) without the elements of diamonds, clones or wild car chases from those films, but instead with a sober and intense story, SPOILER which ends as an uncompromising defense for truth in all contexts.
The film could have benefited from an opening text about East-Berlin and that Mossad had just localized the Surgeon there, and there are also some difficulties in seeing all the well-known actors as Jews, - but, more importantly, they all do well. Particularly Helen Mirren (The Last Station (2009)), who simply becomes her character here, but also Jessica Chastain (The Martian (2015)) and Jesper Christensen (Spectre (2015)), who is icy as the Nazi war criminal, mixing psychopathic diabolism with rationality and sympathetic qualities.
The Debt is a remake of the Israeli The Debt/Ha-Hov (2007), written by Matthew Vaughn (Kick-Ass (2010)), Jane Goldman (Stardust (2007)) and Peter Straughan (The Men Who Stare at Goats (2009)), and directed by great English filmmaker John Madden (The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (2011)). It is an attractive, good film.

Related review:

John Madden: The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (2011) - Elderly Brits me in India in Madden's delightful film

Watch a short trailer for the film here

Cost: 20 mil. $
Box office: 45.6 mil. $
= Flop
[The film premiered at the Deauville American Film Festival in France September 4 and runs 113 minutes. The Debt was finished and ready for release in July 2010, but due to the sale of distributor Miramax, the North American release was delayed until August 31 2011. The film opened #2 to 9.9 mil. $ in North America, where it grossed 31.1 mil. $ (68.2 % of the total gross.) The 2nd and 3rd biggest markets were Spain with 4.6 mil. $ (10.1 %) and the UK with 2.3 mil. $ (5 %). The Debt is certified fresh at 76 % with a 6.5 critical average on Rotten Tomatoes.]

What do you think of The Debt?

First Spaceship on Venus (1960) or, East Block Gravity

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A poster for Kurt Maetzig's First Spaceship on Venus

Today's review is of a rather obscure movie, the East-German/Polish First Spaceship on Venus, an adaptation of a Stanislaw Lem novel called The Astronauts. Pole Lem also wrote the novel basis for Solaris (1972 and 2002) and many other adaptations, but Venus was the first film based on his writings.
Venus takes place in the then sfuture of 1985, in which a spool from another planet is found at a spaceship crash site in the Siberian dessert. An international mission is assembled to journey to Venus to learn more about this civilization. But what they find is disheartening yet eye-opening.
Venus is a curious film, told in bountiful narration, and - on Earth - by a blond reporter. The small crew of the space mission includes an African, two apparently Japanese, some Caucasians and what appears an Indian, the highest standing professor of them all, who works tirelessly to figure out the message on the spool. A natural center for the men on-board is the female voyager Dr. Ogimura (Yoko Tani (The Savage Innocents (1960)), who is described as a "good woman". But - save for a brief indication of nakedness in the beginning, (to get into the spacesuit), Venus doesn't hold any hanky-panky or jokes of any kind. The very scientific team are strictly interested in facts and a sober examination of them, - making them a bit dull as characters.
But then Venus is, first and last, science fiction, and actually pretty good sci-fi: The science talk is mostly convincing, and the suits and sets are well-made. The effects include; zero gravity moving around and laughing, a robot brought along to make initial tests on Venus, the strange landscape of Venus and a kind of black, dangerous porridge that follows them there, as they escape. Several crew members die in the dramatic mission, including the sympathetic and courageous African, who is simply left on Venus.
Venus is an enjoyable science fiction curiosity, sometimes involuntarily comic, as when SPOILER one male crew member dies because the robot drives into his stomach.

Hardly 'Mankind's Most Incredible Journey!' - but Kurt Maetzig's First Spaceship on Venus is worth watching

The details:

German director of Venus Kurt Maetzig had previously done communistic propaganda for the USSR, the so-called 'socialist realism'. Instances of Soviet propaganda is said to flourish some in the long version of Venus, which runs 93 minutes. Unfortunately, I was only able to see the shortened US version of 78 minutes.
The technique of Venus is pretty rough; it continuously uses jump cuts; perhaps due to time restraints, or clearly defined, alternative theory, opposition to Hollywood-film-making or just plain incompetence.
Still, the film is very interesting from a historical standpoint, although many questions about it cannot be answered now, like the one above. Another question would be about the internationality of the crew and particularly the inclusion of the almost pitch black African as a total equal on the mission; was this done as a provocation to the still blatantly racist US, as idealism on the film-maker's part, or is it taken from Lem's novel?
The film shows SPOILER a scary example of the effects of atomic explosions, as the inhabitants of Venus have annihilated themselves, only leaving, literally, their shadows. In this way, Venus seems to carry an anti-A-bomb-message. - Something that was also heavily prevalent in the American 'atomic-scare'-sci-fi-movies of the 50sand 60s. 
Mostly the film seems deeply humanistic in its viewpoint, but then again, perhaps the original version is different. So many questions.
In any case, this Forbidden Planet (1956)-reminiscent, minor science fiction gem is worth searching out for anyone interested in SF, history and 60s space exploration.

Related review:

Stanislaw Lem: Solaris (2002) - A suffering space question mark

Watch a short trailer for the film here

Budget: Unknown
Box office: Unknown - but it apparently sold more than 4 mil. tickets in East Germany, so there's a good chance it was a hit
= Unknown

What do you think of First Spaceship on Venus?
Can you answer any of the many questions from my review?
Have you seen other Stanislaw Lem-adaptations and if so, how were they?