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HISTORY THRILLER



The Lives of the Others, Germany 2006, directed by Florian v. Donnersmarck


   | Giuseppe Sedia (NAPOLI). At the end of the movie, Gerd Wiesler (Ulrich Mühe) who was appointed from Normannstraße headquarter for spying and framing Georg Dreyman’s private life, is caught in a close-up together with a DDR employee responsible for insulting his country with a joke about Erich Honecker, the last political leader of the GDR just before the Fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.
   Their faces alternatively shown unfocused on the screen are like those of the thousands citizens filed and controlled by the Ministry of State Security commonly known as the Stasi. Among them, the Dramatiker Georg Dreyman (performed by a persuading Sebastian Koch recently noted for his leading role in “The Black Book”) who is engaged with an actress (Martina Gedeck) secretly desired by the Minister of Culture that will try his best to frustate their love. Just like Paul Verhoeven’s last movie, “The Live of the Others” is a flawless historical thriller that deals with GDR internal affairs depicting the hard lifes of artists compelled to waver between a blind compliance toward the DDR government and an alleged intellectual freedom. Von Donnersmarck astonishing debut won a well-deserved Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film at the 2007 Academy Awards.