the lives of others analysis
The Lives of Others is a masterfully plotted historical and fictional drama that never bores its audience with mediocre side plots that add nothing of substance. The makings of your everyday life are the seeds for this powerful story that you are shaping about yourself, right now. When Dreyman the playwright visits the former Stasi headquarters, a trolley is required to bring in his bulky files. By the movie’s end, Wiesler becomes a whole, integrated being of feeling and reason. With Ulrich Mühe, Martina Gedeck, Sebastian Koch, Ulrich Tukur. One way or another, he is usually able to get to the truth hidden behind the fabrications of those he is questioning.
He becomes a man who feels, simply because he was privy to the feeling lives of others. Copyright © 2006 - 2020 by CIStems, Inc., d.b.a. Human beings have always used stories to share experience, to teach, and to humanize people. After all, he is a Stasi police agent monitoring for actions against a Police State. The Lives of Others relies upon these visual means to assist with the telling of the story as much as it relies upon the script. Wiesler is assigned to the case by his old friend and proceeds to bug the writer's flat and put him under 24-hour surveillance. The Cold War is still raging and the communist bloc does not trust its own citizens. You expressed this juxtaposition in terms of feminine vs masculine energies. The Minister of Culture Bruno Hempf (played by Thomas Thieme) supports this surveillance, but Wiesler later discovers that the Hempf’s desire to ruin Dreyman because of his lust for Dreyman’s girlfriend is the underlying reason for the surveillance. When the cashier ringing him up asks if he wants the book wrapped, he replies “No, it’s for me.”. Goethe-Institut San Francisco / Exzellenzcluster „Kulturelle Grundlagen von Integration“, Universität Konstanz / Excellent illustration of Jungian perspective toward the characters. "The Lives of Others" is not the espionage action-thriller I had been led to believe it was. Dreyman finds some illuminating surprises in his files. The Lives of Others on the other hand, is a harsh, realistic depiction of the dark side of former East Germany. Thank you for writing such a lovely analysis, Anna, “For example, the masculine energy is the hunter and gatherer. Forty years earlier, the Stasi's job was being done by the Gestapo, which was active for a mere dozen years and employed around 45,000 agents with some 160,000 registered informants. Thx Dr. Deborah. Life stories are powerful stimuli to your imagination and to understanding who you are and what you want psychologically and spiritually for yourself.
Captain Gerd Wiesler (Ulrich Muhe) is a seasoned veteran in the Stasi whose specialty is interrogations. They speak to the human condition, our passions, challenges, triumphs and failures, and our reason to be. Gradually the intelligence officer becomes a silent accomplice . To accomplish this feat, they employee 100,000 people and rely upon twice as many other individuals who serve as informers. Anna Funder’s book Stasiland and Donnersmark’s film The Lives of Others both discuss the Stasi’s oppression of the people in West Berlin during the time of the Berlin Wall. We must integrate these seemingly opposite energies into our personalities and awareness, if we are to become whole beings who can relate to the plight of others. Still today, I am moved deeply by the powerful portrayal of human being pitted against human being solely because they have no understanding of each others’ lives. Wiesler and the Stasi team bug the apartment and set up surveillance equipment in a nearby attic, and begin reporting on Dreyman’s activities. Dreyman’s girlfriend, Christa-Maria, was noticeably absent from the apartment and has not been in contact.
Warmly Deborah. Feeling aligns us with, rather than against, each other. The political context plays a significance role not only in the film’s subject matter but also in its cinematography, which exploits the voyeuristic tendencies of the audience, reflecting the surveillance of the Stasi Secret Police officers. All content provided on this blog is for informational purposes only.
Woman, in contrast, is the nurturer, the protector, the healer; she’s more emotional, artistic and understanding; she responds with heart rather than solely from rules and regulations. Stasi Captain Gerd Wiesler (. A Reflection on "How the Other Half Lives" by the Other Half
Developmentally, men and women start out with energies that solely express their gender. Psychological and spiritual development necessitates that men and women develop and integrate the awareness of the other into themselves, if they are to become balanced human beings. In John le Carre's The Spy Who Came in From the Cold, the Stasi man targeted for destruction is a dedicated true believer, while the man being kept in place by MI6 is a corrupt, time-serving career man. Let me admit candidly Deby has a lovable heart which is very much visible here.I really enjoyed the remark about the masculine energy of police state threatened by heart ,whose feeling can weaken its so-called rules & regulations. Riis, an immigrant, police reporter, photojournalist and most importantly: a pioneer and social reformer, tells a very captivating yet appalling experience of the lower class life in New York, ‘Das Leben der Anderen’ (The Lives of Others) is a striking example of how a director can convey narrative links within a film by employing various styles and film techniques. These narrative links are further cemented by Donnersmarck’s use of various lighting styles, diegtic and non-diegtic sound, revealing camera shots and intricate mise-en-scene. American History II
Wiesler and Grubitz are formidable opponents of anyone who may indicate any sympathy with the West or break the rules in any way.
"Privacy shelters, and thus offers sustenance to fragile virtues.". How the Other Half Lives
Dreyman and Hauser’s conversation therefore stands out, and their solemn discussion is emphasised.
I really love this film.
I agree that we consider ourselves, our hurts and disappointments by comparing and contrasting ourselves to others lives. Skeleton in the cupboard is very descriptive. Talk with you FB. Wiesler has great respect for this actress, and his morality is offended by this. Taglines | I enjoys reading your interpretation as well as the story, just watched the film and looking how this story might related to other audience and what common and different experiences of philosophical, literal interpretations we might have. At first thought, you may think that the Lives of Others is about the cultural ideas of pro-communist East Berlin in 1984.
Thank you. nice reading, wonderful analysis. Instead, it intricately examines a Stasi investigator's own humanity, and suggests some rays of hope still shone on their own in the dark recesses of East Berlin. Listening in on the playwright and his girlfriend, he develops human sympathies for people his superior believes to be suffering from a sickness known as 'anthropocentrism'. The Lives of Others is a very different experience to Good Bye Lenin!, the funny and much-admired satire from 2003 on East Germany's collapse which, … This is the beauty of film in showing us a better way. November 17, 2005
Welcome to the grim world of East Germany in 1984 where the powerful Stasi, the secret police, keep watch over the totalitarian society. Later, Dreyman writes a critical article about suicide in East Germany, inspired by the suicide of a close artist friend, and gets it published in West Germany. However, Wiesler chooses to protect Dreyman by falsely noting that Dreyman is writing a play for the 40th anniversary of the GDR. Life stories are powerful stimuli to your imagination and to understanding who you are and what you want psychologically and spiritually for yourself. We then see the Stasi at work, doggedly recording everything for the organisation's files, with entries in their log such as (noting the end of a birthday party) 'unwrap presents and then presumably have intercourse'. Similar incidents lead to jail sentences in Milan Kundera's novel The Joke and Emir Kusturica's film When Father Was Away on Business. This use of visual screenplay by Donnersmarck can be interpreted as a reference to the Stasi’s vice-like grip on the lives of the people residing in East Germany. The more time he spends listening in on them, the more he comes to care about them. Forty years earlier, the Stasi's job was being done by the Gestapo, which was active for a mere dozen years and employed around 45,000 agents with some 160,000 registered informants. Download Study Guides in English and German. The Stasi lasted 40 years in only half of the country, employed 100,000 full-time workers and had, so this movie tells us, 400,000 informants.
Nurture feeling. He listens~~ to their dreams, their laughter, their fears, their passion and their lovemaking. Dreyman’s friends discuss and fear the worst. Through this charade, The Lives of Others elucidates another facet of prescribed and performed identities: While today, debates surrounding performances and staging center around diversity and discrimination, the GDR imposed prescribed identities onto all citizens such that the prescribed and the performed were the same. Man hunts, gathers, acquires, usurps, and destroys if threatened. Synopsis Thank you for sharing your experience and valuable insights into this difficult topic. Some of its victims say not. On the other side of the racial spectrum, Heidi Durrow’s novel The Girl Who Fell From the Sky follows a young girl growing up in the, Animal Farm by George Orwell and The Lives of Others by Florian von Donnersmarck have highlighted the dangers inherent in a Totalitarian society by using stylistic features. One of the best scenes in The Lives of Others is a small one that signals that a transformation has taken place in Wiesler during his surveillance of the playwright. The theatre people are dedicated socialists who merely seek artistic freedom and a certain licence to criticise and exercise democratic rights. Later, Wiesler notices a new book published by Dreyman dedicated to him. © 2009-2014 Thank you friends. | The Lives of Others: Film Analysis by Dr. Deborah. However, von Donnersmarck and Ulrich Muhe persuade us of that possibility without suggesting such figures were common. The Lives of Others subtly evokes a vindictive society that exists by turning citizens against each other in the interests of national unity and collective security. Hello Farrukh, I’m happy you want to see the film, now. Author: Gradey Wang, The 2006 German drama film The Lives of Others (German: Das Leben der Anderen) directed by Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck follows the lives of playwright Georg Dreyman (played by Sebastian Koch) and his girlfriend Christa-Maria Sieland (played by Martina Gedeck) in East Germany between 1984 and 1991. Their humanness, their creativity and passion, and their love for each other stimulated Wiesler’s imagination and his feminine, more feeling side. The boy responds: "My father." We cannot imagine the swift change that happens in the last century in poverty. Selling a foreign language film to a UK audience can be difficult as the majority of films that are consumed here are US/UK productions or UK films. No matter the story being shared, there is always something in it with which you can relate, if you dare to open yourself up to and explore its meanings. Feeling is the basis to understanding, empathy, compassion, kindness and giving.
But, my heart is a Kierkegaardian that works of true love are indeed possible. Regardless of position and relation to the Stasi, everyone in the movie felt observed and consequently acted as though they truly believed the socialist ideology. Hope to see you again soon. Wiesler has a gut feeling that Dreyman can't be as ideal as he seems, and believes surveillance is called for. Gerd Wiesler is an officer with the Stasi, the East German secret police. © 2020 Psychology in Every Day Life | A Publication By Dr. Deborah Khoshaba. The once rigid Stasi officer begins to intervene in their lives, in a positive way, protecting them whenever possible.
Hello Deanna, I can appreciate what you say here.
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