The Lives Of Others
This recent Academy Award winner for best foreign film is definitely worth watching. This film comes from Germany and takes place in East Germany in the mid 80's a few years before the fall of the Berlin wall. Now I know that some of you are concerned because I said FOREIGN film. Yes that means subtitles. Yes that means you have to READ during the film. Get over it! A lot of good films have subtitles and you just have to accept it.
In East Germany the communist government had a surveillance branch whos' job it was to monitor and observe and citizens they thought were less than faithful to its socialist views. Oh yeah. Orwell was right. Big Brother was in fact watching. One of the top observers there is Captain Weisler. He is handed the assignment to watch and closely observe a writer/playwright Georg Dreyman and his girlfriend a German actress named Christa. As he is listening to the couple, Weisler becomes more engrossed in their life and starts to live vicariously through them. When Dreyman takes it upon himself to rebel against the socialist party and write papers that belittle his government, Weisler starts to lie in his report and protect Dreyman.
This movie exposes the tyranny and oppression that communism held over East Germany. For most of us twenty-somethings who were just kids when the Berlin wall came down, it is hard for us to imagine a world where your basic rights to live , think, and express yourself freely don't exist. This film tells a story of what people do in order to free themselves of Germany's vice hold over its people.
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