Review of The Lives of Others

Privacy is something most people take for granted. It is hard to imagine someone watching and listening to our every move, yet in the early 1980s the secret police of the GDR (German Democratic Republic) commonly spied on the citizens of East Berlin in an attempt to discover who was planning on defecting to the west. In The Lives of Others a corrupt government official tries to misuse the system in order to win over the woman he loves. In an attempt to eliminate her boyfriend (a stage writer) the government official hires the secret police's most loyal and experienced technician to spy on the writer in order to find evidence against him. However, over time the spy becomes fascinated with the man's personal life and begins to support the writer's actions over those of the government he assist. The Lives of Others has one of the most interesting stories of any film I've seen recently. I was intrigued by the idea of a government having the right to spy on any citizen questioned. The film also explores how a life of consistently watching the lives of others may appear interesting at first, yet it produces its own emotional effects on the individual spying. Often it is those people who spend their lives watching others who possess the most personal problems such as loneliness and depression. Overall, The Lives of Others is a clever, well-made film about a time-period and place in which people did not share the same freedoms that we possess now in the U.S. or at least that's what we are made to believe.

RATING: 4.7/5