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Under Surveillance
by Rachael K. BosleyThe Lives of Others (Das Leben der Anderen) explores the intersection of the personal and the political in the Communist German Democratic Republic of the mid-1980s, when the Stasi secret police infiltrated every nook and cranny of civilian life. The story begins in 1984 with what appears to be a routine assignment for Stasi Capt. Wiesler (Ulrich Mühe): spying on an artist, playwright Georg Dreyman (Sebastian Koch). As he monitors events in Dreyman's apartment from his secret post on the building's top floor, Wiesler comes to empathize with Dreyman and his actress girlfriend, Christa-Maria (Martina Gedeck), and begins to doubt the merits of the system he has believed in all his life.Writer/director Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck recalls that in an early discussion about the picture's look with cinematographer Hagen Bogdanski, BVK, he told the cameraman he wanted "to create a world where you feel the only warmth comes from the people themselves." Bogdanski immediately understood this; like so many involved in The Lives of Others, the West Berlin native had encountered the chill of the GDR during his youth, when he cro...See the full content of this document
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