Truth twenty-four times a second #4: The Lives of Others

First of all, some bloggity news to pass along. A certain paternal relation of mine has finally decided to set up his own blog, Mad Poet at the Gate, featuring a number of poems ranging from Koans to reminiscences about science fiction writers. It seems to be a household thing, as his wife has a blog, too. Seriously, if you appreciate language, check them out. Even if you don't, check them out, and maybe you will. If nothing else, you can try to figure out how one writes in Kanji on an English-language blog...

Last night, I got to see this year's best foreign film Oscar winner, The Lives of Others, in the theatre. I have to admit, it was good, and even though the academy pretty clearly made a mistake by selecting it over Pan's Labyrinth, it's not a horrible choice. Choosing Crash last year for Best Picture, for instance, was a much poorer judgment.

The Lives of Others is set in mid 1980's East Germany, when the Stasi, or Secret Police, still ruled the country through fear and a vast web of informers, and the early signs of Glasnost and the fall of the Wall were still completely invisible to just about everyone. Like a lot of the books and movies I've seen recently, and most of our daily political news, it concerns the use and misuse of power. At it's heart is the Stasi agent assigned to monitor a seemingly loyal playwright, who gradually realizes that his assignment has much more to do with the personal agendas of the powerful than with any real state interest. It is here that the film manages to make it's most profound moral statement, in that Wiesler, the Stasi agent, can hardly be considered to be pure of heart for realizing the evil of his orders. After all, he has been instrumental in ruining countless lives, many of whom were likely innocent, all in the name of duty. His affront at being used against a personal rival, rather than an enemy of the state, is as much from a personal sense of pride as from any innate goodness. Still, without giving away the ending, we have a clear case where Wiesler manages to fundamentally do good in the world, where most would have not, and that must count for something.

More than anything else, films like this (and Pan's Labyrinth in its own way) show just how dangerous it is to place loyalty to an ideology as one's primary goal. As we've seen in Iran (I'll be reviewing Reading Lolita in Tehran in a few days), in North Korea, in the US invasion of Iraq, and countless other places, ideologues typically believe in pretty sounding words that fail miserably in practice. One could strongly suggest that it took Marxists about a century to pretty much prove this point completely, as East Germany demonstrated just a few years later. When ideologues gain power, the results range from bad to tragic, with almost no room for any good outcome. For the pawns in their games, it doesn't matter if you are a loyal soldier (cough...Scooter Libby...cough) or a well-meaning crusader whose strings are being pulled from above (paging the US Attorneys): you are still a pawn, and in the end their moral failing will compromise you one way or the other.I have a great deal of sympathy for the fired US Attorneys, but it is important to remember that they were willing to be quiet about what seems to be a vast plan to obstruct justice until the Department of Justice decided to rub it in their faces. Up until that point, justice was just as perverted, but they felt none of the current compunction to speak out. Then again, as we argued before, even if injured pride moves you to do the right thing, you've still done the right thing...

As a film, The Lives of Others, features any number of strong acting performances in a story told very tightly until the surprisingly loose, John Irving-like ending. If the academy was fooled, it was because they went with a good Actor's movie over better Director's movie. It's almost excusable, but disappointing to see one of the truly visionary films of the past few years lose to a well-told but significantly less ambitious film. Still, though, this one is very much worth seeing. Remember, as the second best foreign film of the year, it is probably the second best film of the year as well (The Departed might make the top 10, if I'm feeling charitable, but last year was not a proud one for American film). More than any I saw last year, it is a deeply humanistic film, one that really does a tremendous job in finding the humanity amidst our boldest and bravest choices and most craven moral compromises.