The Lives of Others

The Lives of Others (2006). Director: Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck

Many fantasy stories feature a theme where some adventurer wakes a golem from its slumber, often by reaching into some “core” beneath the golem’s stony skin. Whoever first came up with the idea of golems perhaps meant it to be a metaphor for ourselves. We all have a core of humanity within us. Most of us, for one reason or another, are conscious about the existence of our humanity and use it to guide our actions. However, under certain unfortunate circumstances, people can grow oblivious to what makes us human in the first place and bury the core of humanity under a crust of cruelty or naivete. Those people become golems, whose salvation in not in some adventurer’s hand, but in their own. The Lives of Others tells a story of such a golem, who finds his buried humanity and eventually awakens from within. 

The golem’s name is Wiesler, a secret police (Stasi) captain in East Germany in mid 1980s, a few years before the fall of the Berlin Wall. The film opens with Wiesler giving a lecture to a class of Stasi officers-in-training on interrogative strategies, using a person who helped his neighbor escape to West Germany as a real example. Immediately we are convinced about Wiesler’s unwavering belief in communism and his country as a utopia of socialism. It is not yet clear what his character is, as there is little emotion being conveyed out of the efficiency and effectiveness with which Wiesler does his job. Soon after, Wiesler is ordered by the Minister of Culture, Hempf, to perform full surveillance on a famous playwright, Georg Dreyman, and his actress girlfriend, Christa-Maria Sieland, as the authority suspects that Dreyman might have been in contact with the West. Wiesler sets out to perform this assigned mission as usual, but it isn’t long before he realizes that the mission of surveying Dreyman is nothing but Hempf’s dishonorable maneuver of coercing Christa-Maria into being his mistress. 

This finding shakes Wiesler’s long-held belief in the whole political system from the vary foundation. Moreover, the 24-7 surveillance brings Wiesler very close to Dreyman. As his doubts toward the whole operation solidify, Wiesler begins to sympathize towards Dreyman and Christa-Maria. As a viewer, it is wonderful to watch the seed of humanity germinate in a very self-controlled Wiesler as the story progresses. Just as waking a golem doesn’t make it human, this freshly germinated humanity doesn’t give Wiesler a different demeanor, only that now he operates under a different guideline. Only when he is alone do we get to see Wiesler the golem peel off his old stony skin and reveal the soft new flesh underneath. However, there are a few scenes that mean to tell us that Wiesler’s transformation goes beyond his sympathy for Dreymand and Christa-Maria. A scene with a neighbor’s son in the elevator is one example. The son naively asks if Wiesler is the Stasi asshole that his father mentions in private. Years of training prompted Weisler to ask the boy what his father’s name is, but he stops himself before finishing the sentence. He immediately finishes the question by asking instead what’s the name of the ball that the boy is carrying. It’s hard not to smile.

The Lives of Others is one of those films with an ending that holds you at the moment long after it is over. Suffice to say that Wiesler tries to save Dreyman and Christa-Maria, but his attempt is only partially successful. An unfortunate turn of events ensues, and Wiesler pays a dear price for his actions to protect his “friends”. Not long after the Berlin Wall falls. Wiesler now delivers mails for a living. The film doesn’t tell us how Wiesler feels about his demotion and his fall from significance. My guess is that Wiesler considers everything as serving his sentence for being part of, or failure to prevent, the tragedy. The last scene of this movie, however, provides us with a most gratifying recompense in the form of an ode, with a name of A sonata for a Good Man.