Art/Cultural Opportunity: The Lives of Others(#7)

For our self-chosen art/cultural opportunity, I decided to go see a movie that was being shown by Penn State at the State Theatre. The movie was called The Lives of Others.

The Lives of Others is a film about East Germany under the police state and dictatorship that they lived with a little more than two decades ago. The film is specifically about the East German secret police, the Stasi, who spy on people they view suspicious to their government. The main character is one of the Stasi who convinces a superior to allow him to spy on a celebrated East German playwright and his actress girlfriend. The Stasi is middle-aged and lonely and, at first, his spying and eavesdropping into their lives is all business, but eventually he seems to like to manipulate them. However, he soon starts to care for these people and some of their friends, and when the government attempts to stamp down the playwright, the Stasi is able to protect from any harm.

This is a very deep film that examines different perspectives. The playwright is initially dissatisfied with his government, but believe it isn't worth it to go against them. This changes when a friend of his is blacklisted and subsequently commits suicide. In turn, the playwright pens an article that is secretly smuggled into a West German magazine about the suicide rates increasing in East Germany and how the government has stopped counting them.

The Stasi is a hard man to like at the beginning. He is cold and dispassionate, and his job is simply that, a job. He eventually leads the operation to spy on the playwright and manipulates him, such as when he purposely rings the doorbell when his girlfriend is coming home with another man. However, he begins to slowly feel compassion for the subjects he is listening to, which starts out creepy, but eventually ends rather sweet. For one, he allows one of the playwright's friends to escape East Germany to the West even though he knows he's doing hours beforehand. The friend never escaped, but the fact that he turned away from it shows he is beginning to show compassion. Eventually, the government attempts to put the playwright in prison for good, but the Stasi successfully hides all the evidence against him, and he gets away. It's rather ironic that the Stasi was like a businessman because his superiors were anything but business. They had petty jealousies that they dealt with through using the spy.

In real life, much of this couldn't have happened. The Security arm of the government was probably the most repressive authority in the history of the world. They had thousands of spies everywhere, so you had to extremely secretive about anything the government didn't approve of. Also, the Stasi couldn't have helped the playwright, because, in reality, the spies were also being spied on as well.

However, that doesn't affect the powerful film that made from this repressive regime. I think its a quietly optimistic film showing how people can change from what they've been they're entire life and how good can come through even in the repressive environments.