What was it like to live in east Germany before the wall fell? What did it feel like to have to pay attention to what you said, because you never knew who you could trust or had to think about the possibility of the place you were in being bugged? What was the feeling a Stasi employee had when looking into the lives of others? This movie tries to give an answer to these questions.
In this movie we are let into the lives of some artists and specifically Georg Dreyman (played by Sebastian Koch who also had a very impressive role in Black Book by Paul Verhoeven). His ideas are dangerous according to the government and Hauptmann Gerd Wiesler (a great part play by Ulrich Mühe) has to watch the writer 24 hours a day to see if there’s anything they can arrest him for. This setup results in a very good movie.
It shows what the effects are on Wiesler, who is constantly in the life of Wiesler.
The feeling of being in east Germany has been created very well, you see the old Trabant cars driving around and you feel you have to be careful about what you say and what you do. Owning some magazines from the west could be enough reason to be interrogated. The ending of the movie is pure genius, with exhilarating final scenes preceding it. It’s clear why this movie scores as high as it does (it’s also in the IMDB top 250). I agree with these scores, this an extremely well made German movie.
Score: 8