The Lives of Others

Das Leben der Anderen. The Lives of Others. That is a German foreign film that is now showing in theaters in New York that I saw the other day. It won an Academy Award for best foreign film and it is one of those films I could watch over and over. The film is political, for it addresses the communist regime, the totaliarism system and the dictatorship in East Germany, then the GDR, before the fall of the Berlin wall. More so, the film is educational to me for I did not know artists and writers were under surveillance by Stasi agents, spies and informants who were sometimes even ones own wife or husband and blacklisted for being subversive under the dictatorship of the state of the Staats Sicherheit, State Security in real life as was depicted in the film. This film reminds me of the book nineteen eighty four all the way ministry, inner and outer party and one aspect of the film is that the people prevail. The music is awesome and that Sonata For A Good Man track rocks. Will another film as interesting as this ever come along. And what does this have to do with a No Police State?