I stumbled on a request to see the movie Das Leben der Anderen (The Lives of Others), from one of the Eastern Orthodox podcasts that I frequent. My local library had a copy and I was stunned about how good it was. At the end of the movie I thought, this is the type of movie Michael Moore could only dream of producing. Even though the movie is in German the subtitles are pretty easy to read. The only exception is when there is banter back and fourth. The movie stays on point and does not get overtly political. In a day and age with domestic spying programs still fresh in the minds of Americans, this movie is very relevant. It did a great job in portraying the 1980s DDR (Deutsche Demokratische Republik) and it won favor for mentioning the magazine Der Spiegel. Which to this day still does some of the best political reporting that the United States could learn from. The only detraction that I came away with after watching the movie is that you need to remind yourself, that the lead character in the movie was a Stasi Agent and he is not the hero of the movie. One act of compassion does not necessarily absolve a tenured career in surveillance and interrogation for a very brutal and totalitarian organization. You also didn’t get the feeling of any real remorse from the lead character of what he had done in his career after the fall of the Berlin Wall.
So being a Foreign Film junkie, I would seriously recommend this movie.
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http://www.thelivesofothers.com/
http://k31.myminicity.com/
