At the first 15 minutes into The Lives of Others (Das Leben der Anderen), the debut of German director Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, I thought: thanks God we don't live under the Communist dictatorship anymore... at that exactly moment, I had a counter thought: but this kind of violence is still current, maybe even worse. Abusive governments are so constant as the time itself, and it is probably that we will never cease to live under such excesses of power.
A increasing silence took hold of me as the film went on and on... first, a silence in my mind, in my whole head. After, a silence wrapped around my heart and, at last, in my soul.
At the end, I was totally quiet in front of such an accurate story. One of the characters, in the last 15 minutes, looked at the one time minister and said that he couldn't believe how he could had governed his country. We see this everyday, in the whole world. And for that, a 2006 movie about events that occurred at 1984/89 is not obsolete, as many good historical films can be.
Another movie that I took so long to reach, and one that I'm grateful for finally have seen.
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| The Lives of the Others (Das Leben der Anderen). Directed and writen byFlorian Henckel von Donnersmarck. With: Urich Mühe, Martina Gedeck, Sebastian Koch. Germany, 2006, 137 min., Dolby Digital, Color (Netflix). |
PS: Martina Gedeck starred in one of my dearest movies, Bella Martha. How good it is became clearer to me when I saw the US remake, No Reservations, with Catherine Zeta-Jones, Aaron Eckhart and Abigail Brealin. They are all actors that I like, but who couldn't do much for a movie that got a good original story and transformed it in a bunch of syrupy scenes.
I've got this one lined up, I think it being so political is what's been holding me back, but I'll get to it eventually. You made it sound too relevant and valid.
ReplyDelete[j]
Relevant and vallid are good words for it. It is political, but, above all, about the lives of people and their relations in impossible circunstances.
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