Review
After several light features (like the highly successful "Goodbye Lenin") who evoked a popular nostalgia it was about time that the dark past of the DDR is finally the topic of a movie. Not that I condemn light entertainment. There surely were plenty of happy times for the people in the DDR as well as in every other society. But just like in the Biedermeier time at the beginning of the 19th century in middle Europe the DDR was controlled by an omnipresent secret service the Stasi which forced people to be quiet about their true feelings. Considering this the cry for the good old' times is simply inappropriate.
The movie tells the story of Stasi agent Wiesler (brilliant Ulrich Mühe) who follows his guidelines with chilling accuracy. His newest assignment is to wiretapping famed author Georg Dreyman (Sebastian Koch) and his companion actress ChristaMaria Sieland (Martina Gedeck). Listening to their conversations he gets more and more caught in their lives.
Wiesler as he is played here by Ulrich Mühe is not an individual but a symbol for the whole system where people did everything they were told to do. Clad only in gray and brown filmed in stark and cold light he's at first not capable of feelings. On the other hand Dreymann and Sieland represent the antiEstablishment the intellectuals who were severely hunted arrested and killed by the government.
The most frightening aspect here is the banality of it all. The offices are bleak the people talk about bugging operations etc. with a frighting causality. These men in grey look talk and behave like boring civil servants and their approach the "normality" of their job makes it terribly chilling.
Director Florian HenckelDonnersmarck is also able to recreate a feeling of constant observance and spying. In a disturbing scene a harmless joke becomes the center of suspicion and fear. We can glimpse how it must have been for citizens of the DDR to live with constant suppression of their free will and opinion.
As important it is not to forget the good things and memories people might have of their past it's also important not to forget or to reduce the impact and fear that this regime put on their people for 40 years.