Minority Movie Report - Mike

Last week I watched the 2006 Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck film:"Das Leben der Anderen"(The Live of Others). It is fantastically written, very well shot and the character study is fascinating.

Set in 1984, in East Berlin, Das Leben der Anderen is the story of an agent of the official secret police(called "stasi" - Staatssicherheit, literally State Security) working surveillance and interrogating anyone suspected of being a traitor to the Socialist Unity Party of Germany.

I am not going to give you more details to avoid spoiling some interesting plot twist and turns.

The movie starts slowly, witch scared me a little at first. Thankfully my patience paid off and I realized that the pacing was crucial to establish the characters complexity. You receive just the right amount of information in every scene. The characters lives are totally believable and yet they still keep you guessing.

Now I need to mention that the movie is in German with subtitles. I know some people might be turned off by the subtitles... I say... Give it a chance! You will not regret it.

I say see it and let me know what you think of it!!

Das Leben der Anderen is distributed by Sony Classics.
http://www.sonyclassics.com/thelivesofothers/swf/index.html

Mike Chery
http://www.minoritymoviereport.com/