The Lives of Others (2006) opens with a man listening. Not speaking. Not acting. Just listening: ears trained to pick up the conversation. The pauses, the breaths, the subtext of love or betrayal. It’s 1984 in East Berlin, and Captain Gerd Wiesler (Ulrich Mühe) is a true believer in the GDR, a loyal soldier of the Stasi, and an expert in eavesdropping. He’s a man who knows how long it takes a prisoner to break. Who believes, with chilling conviction, that guilt can be measured in silence. The film is about a man, but it’s also about a country on the brink. It’s not about loyalty. Or betrayal. It’s about what happens when someone begins to feel. When the mechanics of duty give way to the murmur of doubt, and a man who’s spent his whole life observing from a distance finally allows himself to see.
The Lives of Others is the debut feature by Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck (great name), and it’s a rare first films that feels like it was shot by someone who had been waiting their whole life to say a specific thing: and finally had a chance to say it perfectly. It’s haunted by quiet details: the soft click of a tape recorder, a red typewriter ribbon smuggled in from the West, a musical phrase that gets stuck in your head.
At first, Wiesler is sent to spy on Georg Dreyman (Sebastian Koch), a playwright beloved by the state, and his partner Christa-Maria (Martina Gedeck), a famous actress. The surveillance is political theater: punishment arranged by a jealous Minister. Wiesler doesn’t know that yet. Or maybe he does, and refuses to see it. What matters is the slow shift that follows: as he listens to their lives, something in him softens. He starts to protect them. Quietly. Secretly. And for the first time, he acts not for the state, but for what he believes is right. It’s a testament to the arts, but more-so to our shared humanity that art can aim for.
There are so many ways that this movie could have felt maudlin or self-congratulatory, but it deftly avoids the shtick of so many historical dramas with an axe to grind. That’s partly thanks to Mühe’s performance: so still it’s almost spectral. But also because von Donnersmarck trusts silence. He trusts restraint. He trusts that you, the viewer, will lean in and listen. In an era obsessed with spectacle, The Lives of Others is quiet.
Some have compared The Lives of Others to 1984 (1984), but that’s only half right. Orwell imagined a world so saturated with fear and control that no private interior could survive. This film, in contrast, insists that even under total surveillance, some kernel of truth and beauty might remain. That people change. That resistance can be quiet, even invisible.
Wiesler never gives a speech. He never has a big moment. But that’s what makes his transformation feel true. Redemption here isn’t cinematic. It’s mundane: a changed report, a brief hesitation, a mailbox, a book inscription. And when the denouement arrives in the film, after everyone has moved on and forgotten, we know exactly what kind of man Wiesler was and is. What kind of story this was all along: One that isn’t about the lives of others. It’s about the lives we could have had if we had made better choices as individuals and as a society.
The Lives of Others
Written and directed by Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck
2006
137 minutes
German
Recommended way to watch (at time of publication): Available to rent on all major services.
You’ll like this if you like: Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (2011), The Conversation (1974), Cold War (2018)