Personally, I found The Lives of Others more than a little insufferable. A better, more accurate title would have been East Germany for Idiots.

How about for former dissidents?

Interesting article David, thanks for that.

I was convinced that this novice, this naive upper-class kid who had been graced with being born so late in the West would never, ever be capable of tackling this sort of GDR material, either politically or artistically.

I think that statement hits it on the head -- naive being the key word.

Being married to somebody who grew up in the DDR, I've naturally heard a great deal about what it was like, and I'm afraid Herr Donnersmarck failed to scrape beneath the very obvious surface level. This is a romanticized idea of the DDR, coming from the hand of someone who never suffered a day in his life.

I'll respectfully disagree (though, if I thought you meant it, I'd object to being called an idiot for actually liking the film). You and I both know that you and I both know plenty of people, personally, who experienced the DDR regime firsthand, some from the vantage point of a prison cell. Perhaps each and every one of them would have more of a right - or whatever it is that you're suggesting FHvD does not have - to tell this story (a story that, Scott Foundas argues, handily, and I think rather ridiculously, reducing Ulrich Mühe's character to "hero," shouldn't be told at all).

But to follow this logic... just think of all the films that wouldn't/couldn't/shouldn't have been made. The list is mind-boggling, but the first to spring to mind is the one that addresses this very issue, that is, to what degree does one person even dare to try to comprehend another's suffering: Hiroshima mon amour. Made by some French guy.

Biermann's point is that, though it took him by surprise, he changed his mind (hey, just like Ulrich Mühe's character!), and I don't think he left the theater feeling romanticized. Nor did I.

History aside, what bothered me about the film was how "Hollywood" it was -- its structure, tone, and particularly its screenplay were right out of a Robert McKee seminar. The hard as nails Stasi agent who proclaims, early in the film, that people don't change -- winds up changing!

I don't begrudge FHvD the right to make the film, nor do I have a problem with his humanizing of (and generating sympathy for) the Ulrich Mühe character -- it's just the way he went about it. (The film’s final scene is painful.)

I also felt FHvD overemphasized the importance of artists, their struggles, etc. The East Germany of his film is made up of artists/intellectuals and high-ranking Stasi agents. No one else.

There was a documentary at the 2005 Berlinale (I forget the title) about three friends from the former DDR who had planned to escape together, but things went wrong. This tiny film, in my opinion, said more about the reality of life in the DDR than this slick melodrama.

You're definitely making me anxious to see it a second time and to take a closer, more critical look. I see that it's just out on DVD over here, so it won't be long before I do just that. Thanks, FB. I'll drop a line after that second viewing.

I admire Foundas quite a bit, but this review is almost hilariously ironic. He dismisses Lives as "the sort of movie that often gets wildly overpraised by audiences [...] who believe a good movie is one where the heroes and villains are clearly demarcated." But the review itself is predicated almost entirely on Foundas' knee-jerk auto-disdain for any movie that would feature a noble Stasi agent. How anybody could think an appropriate joke title would be Remember Those Stasi? They Weren’t So Bad After All, or assert that the film evinces "dewy-eyed nostalgia" for the GDR, is beyond my comprehension.

I wrote a piece for Esquire—it won't see print for a couple of months, unfortunately, since the film's true release isn't until February—predicting that certain highbrow critics would respond to this film with the same shallow outrage that e.g. Hoberman felt toward Schindler's List: How dare you make a movie about a few thousand people who lived when six million died? But I'm still sorry to see that I was right.

(That said, I liked Lives of Others a bit less on second viewing, mostly because Weisler's transformation seemed more willed than organic.)

All I can add to that is that I agree twice: with your admiration for Foundas and with your objections to this particular review. I really had to wonder if he saw the same version I did - with an audience here in Berlin, by the way, and though there were indeed a few dewy eyes, they sure as hell weren't dewy with nostalgia.

Meantime, this is interesting: at european-films.net, Boyd van Hoeij is venturing a few - well, a lot more than a few, actually - predictions for tomorrow night's European Film Awards. Notice how often, when and where The Lives of Others pops up in that list.

Mike --

Though hardly dewy-eyed, there's no question that the film does embrace "Ostalgie" to a degree -- think of the scene at the theater towards the end of the film between Dreyman and the former minister. The playwright who can no longer create in a free society -- if that's not a case of "see, things weren't so bad..." then I don't know what is.

Also, isn't it a bit Armond-ish to second-guess and/or attack other critics' motivations? Are you an arbiter of outrage? Is Godard's outrage at Spielberg just as "shallow" as Hoberman's?

On that note, Hoberman's response to Schindler's List ran far deeper than your comment above. He was concerned about the film's over-simplification and its problems of representation. I've always found his description of it ("A feel-good story about the ultimate feel-bad experience") to be spot on.

I'm having difficulty understanding your need to predict how certain highbrow critics will respond to the film. Does that somehow strengthen your defense of it? Even if it is slightly knee-jerk, is not Foundas' political reading of the film just as valid as your own? What about a lowbrow critic (such as myself) who hated the film for its overly simplistic and naïve approach?

Hoberman's description of Schindler's List is entirely accurate, but in theory it's completely value-neutral. What I find shallow is the presumption underlying it—that it is somehow wrong to make a feel-good movie about a feel-bad experience (or vice versa, though no critic would ever carp about the inverse).

And if I thought Foundas' reading as valid as my own, I wouldn't be criticizing it. My problem with it is that he didn't even really need to see the movie to form his opinion of it. The fact that it features a noble Stasi agent automatically renders it meretricous in his eyes.

My problem with it is that he didn't even really need to see the movie to form his opinion of it. The fact that it features a noble Stasi agent automatically renders it meretricous in his eyes.

I'd really be curious to hear Foundas' reaction to that statement. If that is indeed the case, should he then have recused himself from reviewing it? I honestly don't know.

It was a bit disheartening to hear that a film so unchallenging won so many European Film Awards last night.

As for Schindler's List, I fail to see the value-neutrality of Hoberman's comment. Are you suggesting that a critic's approach to a film be devoid of context? That Schindler's List (or any other Holocaust film for that matter) be viewed strictly as film qua film? The event itself, or films that preceded it, should have no part in one's analysis?

Hoberman's comment wasn't value-neutral at all, obviously. I'm saying it should be value-neutral. In other words, I do not agree with his implicit axiom that a film about a "feel-bad experience" must also be "feel-bad," i.e. that is somehow morally reprehensible to tell a story of sacrifice and nobility set during the Holocaust. But then neither do I agree with your implicit axiom that excellent films must necessarily be challenging or unconventional. Hence e.g. my 2002 top ten list, which includes Spider-Man alongside stuff like Devils on the Doorstep, Late Marriage and Turning Gate. There's room for more than one kind of movie, if one keeps an open mind and doesn't simply decide that anything "Hollywood" is automatically garbage. (Admittedly most of it is garbage.)

(Speaking of which, I laughed out loud when I saw James Quandt's Artforum list. Could his taste possibly occupy a narrower band of the cinespectrum?)

Ask and you shall receive. As I think I make fairly clear in the review, what I find objectionable is not the fact that the film gives us a noble Stasi agent, but rather the way in which it goes about it--that the character is a screenwriter's conceit, a man with no inner life, not just any Stasi but the ne plus ultra of good socialist soldiers, who cracks as soon as he cracks open that book of Brecht. Would that someone had thought to pass out the libretto of The Threepenny Opera to all party members of the DDR, no doubt the whole system would have collapsed a few decades sooner.

Scott -- Thanks for responding.

Muhe's character is little more than a conceit -- a caricature on par with the Hollywood Nazis of yore.

Mike - An excellent film need not be challenging (Inside Man will make my top ten this year), but there's nothing worse than walking out of a film feeling as if you've just been clobbered over the head.

I don't remember the agent's cracking being so snappy, Scott, but like I say, I'm looking forward to a second viewing soon.

FB: "The playwright who can no longer create in a free society -- if that's not a case of "see, things weren't so bad..." then I don't know what is."

I do think other interpretations are possible. I was just now poking around with Google, looking for Philip Roth's piece contrasting pre-89 writing in eastern Europe with American fiction of the same period, but, very frustratingly, I have to give up and get back to editing. The gist - and I'm sure this'll be an oversimplification - is that oppression fired the creativity of the likes of Kundera and others. Saying so does not make for a plea for a return of oppression or even for a nostalgic tint on the memory of it.

"Muhe's character is little more than a conceit -- a caricature on par with the Hollywood Nazis of yore."

Er.... keep those knives sharpened, FB. Here's Wenders on his next film: "I know that it will be about Germany and it will take place mostly in the East, a part of the country that I have only had the chance to know for the past 15 years."

Hey, if Wim can do for East Germany what he did for Paris, Texas, then I'm not too worried. But then again, he hasn't been on a winning streak of late.

Thanks for chiming in, Scott. That's a valid complaint, and it's the reason I downgraded my opinion on second viewing (though I still like the film quite a bit). But cheap shots like "Coming soon to a theater near you: Adolf Hitler: I Am Not an Animal!" made your stance look considerably more knee-jerk. If it's just a matter of shoddy characterization, why speculate that FHvD might dedicate his career to apologizing for evil?

What an entertaining, informed discussion. Having just seen this after hearing so much critical praise and reading about it winning one award after the other, I wasn't as impressed as I had hoped I would be. Perhaps its value for me as yet another ignorant American is to be exposed to the Stasi phenomenon period, which I knew nothing about. It's perhaps even sadder to way that why this movie might appeal to American audiences is a slumbering paranoia that we are entering our own age of surveillance and can look at this film as--not so much a historical document--but a cautionary tale.

Knowing now I could never correctly address the historicity of the piece with any kind of informed opinion, I will probably refrain from writing a review. But I will say that the calm erosion of Mühe's character, so devoid of affect, initiated by exposure to Brecht and Beethoven, made its simple point. I accepted it. Like tears wearing down hard stone.