Sim1HGW XX/7
September 26th 2010 10:21
How are you, dear readers? I hope you haven’t come here today for a review of a jolly old piece of celluloid; a rom-com or such like. Because if you have, you will be disappointed.
Today, I would like to tell you about a film I’ve just watched:
Das Leben der Anderen.
It’s anything but jolly. If you are reading this in your native language, then chances are your version of the movie- the one you’d be getting from Blockbuster- is called The Lives of Others.
I have rarely seen a film capture bleakness, darkness, unhappiness and sheer hopelessness quite like this one. I understand why it won an Oscar, I really do.
The whole setting is always bathed in a dirty light, the characters are real people with bad haircuts, bad dress sense and an inability to knot a tie. Added to this, is a melancholy, tragic soundtrack brought to you by a lotta strings and weeping pianos.
The plot unfolds slowly, but you get the idea of what’s going on pretty quickly. Or maybe I did, because I actually grew up in the GDR. I know the plot to be based on nothing but (perhaps incomprehensible) truth. I recognise those dreary brown sofas- we all had them.
‘Hope is the last thing that dies’, one of the characters says in the film, but in this film, hope has been long dead and buried....
There have been a few movies now, concerned with the former GDR. Most famous, perhaps, being ‘Goodbye Lenin’. But that’s taking a humorous look at things and it’s probably intended to evoke a feeling of nostalgia. And we all have it. By ‘we’, I mean the citizens of former East Germany. Citizens of the Deutsche Demokratische Republik. And it wasn’t all bad, you know, despite what the film is portraying. My brother and I had a fabulous childhood, but then we never knew anything else. No-one told us that there was a West Germany (you should have seen the maps they showed us in school!), or indeed a Western Europe. The height of exoticism for us was Russia (which is why we learnt Russian at school). Of course, there are some historical and political reasons for that, too, but if you’re interested in those, may I suggest you find yourself a History blog.
So anyway, we were blissfully unaware that we were living, in what this movie describes as, a Dictatorship.
The fact remains though, that the things depicted in The Lives of Others are the dark truth.
I recall, in 1989/1990, the wheels coming off.....One of my Mum’s best friends turned out to have been an informant for the Secret State Police (STASI). Mum had to stop all contact with him for fear of being associated with him and he fled the town, anyway. I also distinctly remember being in the middle of my woodwork class one day, when two blokes entered the classroom and escorted my teacher out. Turned out, he was also working for the STASI. Make no mistake, dear readers: this shit DID happen. Mum wouldn’t let my brother and me play outside on the weekends, because someone might have seen us and drawn the (natural and logical) conclusion that Mum wasn’t looking after us properly indoors and made a note in her file to that effect.
Maybe because of all this legacy and these memories, do I find this film captivating, fascinating and utterly watchable. But then, it did win an Oscar, didn’t it? So I can’t be completely wrong....Go, watch it!
P.S. Normal, cheerful slagging off will re-commence next week.
Today, I would like to tell you about a film I’ve just watched:
Das Leben der Anderen.
It’s anything but jolly. If you are reading this in your native language, then chances are your version of the movie- the one you’d be getting from Blockbuster- is called The Lives of Others.
I have rarely seen a film capture bleakness, darkness, unhappiness and sheer hopelessness quite like this one. I understand why it won an Oscar, I really do.
The plot unfolds slowly, but you get the idea of what’s going on pretty quickly. Or maybe I did, because I actually grew up in the GDR. I know the plot to be based on nothing but (perhaps incomprehensible) truth. I recognise those dreary brown sofas- we all had them.
‘Hope is the last thing that dies’, one of the characters says in the film, but in this film, hope has been long dead and buried....
There have been a few movies now, concerned with the former GDR. Most famous, perhaps, being ‘Goodbye Lenin’. But that’s taking a humorous look at things and it’s probably intended to evoke a feeling of nostalgia. And we all have it. By ‘we’, I mean the citizens of former East Germany. Citizens of the Deutsche Demokratische Republik. And it wasn’t all bad, you know, despite what the film is portraying. My brother and I had a fabulous childhood, but then we never knew anything else. No-one told us that there was a West Germany (you should have seen the maps they showed us in school!), or indeed a Western Europe. The height of exoticism for us was Russia (which is why we learnt Russian at school). Of course, there are some historical and political reasons for that, too, but if you’re interested in those, may I suggest you find yourself a History blog.
The fact remains though, that the things depicted in The Lives of Others are the dark truth.
I recall, in 1989/1990, the wheels coming off.....One of my Mum’s best friends turned out to have been an informant for the Secret State Police (STASI). Mum had to stop all contact with him for fear of being associated with him and he fled the town, anyway. I also distinctly remember being in the middle of my woodwork class one day, when two blokes entered the classroom and escorted my teacher out. Turned out, he was also working for the STASI. Make no mistake, dear readers: this shit DID happen. Mum wouldn’t let my brother and me play outside on the weekends, because someone might have seen us and drawn the (natural and logical) conclusion that Mum wasn’t looking after us properly indoors and made a note in her file to that effect.
Maybe because of all this legacy and these memories, do I find this film captivating, fascinating and utterly watchable. But then, it did win an Oscar, didn’t it? So I can’t be completely wrong....Go, watch it!
P.S. Normal, cheerful slagging off will re-commence next week.
| 78 |
| Vote |
subscribe to this blog
