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Official development blog for the PARANOIA roleplaying game. No description is available at your security clearance. The Computer is your friend.

Monday, March 24, 2008

The Lives of Others 

Though I always search for inspirational reference material for PARANOIA, I never expected to get a good lead from my mom. But she recently saw and loved the German film The Lives of Others (Das Leben der Anderen, 2006), directed by Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck (about as Germanic a name as I can imagine). The Lives of Others scored a remarkable 94% on Rotten Tomatoes. Having read the IMDB synopsis, now I'm all afire to see it. Thanks, Mom!

Set in (appropriately) 1984, The Lives of Others follows Gerd Weisler, a skilled and zealous captain in East Germany's feared secret police, the Stasi. Weisler begins spying on a playwright named Dreyman. Film critic Roger Ebert's perceptive review in the Chicago Sun-Times tells more:
Wiesler (Ulrich Muehe) first saw Dreyman at the opening of one of his plays, where he was informed by a colleague that Dreyman was a valuable man: 'One of our only writers who is read in the West and is loyal to our government.' How can that be? Wiesler wonders. Dreyman is good-looking, successful, with a beautiful lover; he must be getting away with something. Driven by suspicion, or perhaps by envy or simple curiosity, Wiesler has Dreyman's flat wired and begins an official eavesdropping inquiry.

He doesn't find a shred of evidence that Dreyman is disloyal. Not even in whispers. Not even in guarded allusions. Not even during pillow talk. The man obviously believes in the East German version of socialism, and the implication is that not even the Stasi can believe that. They are looking for dissent and subversion because, in a way, they think a man like Dreyman should be guilty of them. Perhaps they do not believe in East Germany themselves, but have simply chosen to play for the winning team. [...]

Driven by the specter of aggression from without, [East Germany] countered it with aggression from within, as sort of an anti-toxin. Fearing that its citizens were disloyal, it inspired them to be. True, its enemies were real. But the West never dropped the bomb, and East Germany and the other Soviet republics imploded after essentially bombing themselves.

Creepy real-world parallel: The late actor who played Gerd Weisler, Ulrich Muhe, was himself under Stasi surveillance during the Cold War, and later alleged his wife at that time, the actress Jenny Grollmann, was herself a registered Stasi informant. (Grollmann denied it.)
Posted by: Allen Varney / 12:05 AM

Comments:
Of course Grollmann denied it. They always deny it, sometimes even when confronted with the files. There's also a pretty standard list of excuses as to why they spied, when they eventually come around to admitting things. You'll want to read The File, by Timothy Garton Ash, which covers both his experience as a person of interest to the Stasi and more systematic reflections. You'll also want to read Stasiland by Anna Funder, which is a collection of stories with perspectives from all different sides.
# posted by Anonymous Anonymous : March 27, 2008 11:09 AM
 
Wow, you hadn't heard of this film until now?
# posted by Anonymous Anonymous : April 03, 2008 8:18 PM
 
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