A Peeper's Paradise
If you include the occasional stool pigeon, at its height the East German secret police, or Stasi, may have employed as much as one quarter of the population. Among regular informants, an astonishing six percent of the total (roughly) had not yet reached the age of eighteen. The "shield and sword" of the Communist Party, the Stasi nevertheless failed to prevent Germans on both sides from tearing down the Berlin wall in November 1989, and today what can be recovered of Stasi files is open to public inspection while at least a few former Stasi officers have been brought to justice for their crimes. One wonders: if the Stasi had only possessed the kind of information technology routinely used by the American government in 2007, would its fate have been the same?
The parable of the Stasi as understood by introspective German intellectuals comes to us in the film The Lives of Others, recently released on DVD. It's won a long list of international awards so you know it's produced to a very high standard, but what those awards can't tell you is the extent to which it's intelligently made for intelligent people. Many of its scenes one could not imagine ever finding in a Hollywood production, where the intensity of a moment is not wrung dry but left limpid, floating in invitation. And a deft use of character psychology may fool even the most perceptive's expectations. All in all, five of five stars. Run, don't walk, to your neighborhood store to rent it, or do as I did after seeing it and buy a copy
Posted by George Kenney on September 2, 2007 8:37 AM 
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Comments
It's the kind of story that you think could only have happened in former East Germany. And after a while, when you think about it, you realize we are in the middle of it — right now!
A highly recommended film with a surprising outcome too.
Posted by: Tom Rudolf | September 4, 2007 11:53 AM