Florian Henckel Von Donnersmarck
Le Vite Degli Altri

There are fundamental books that open your mind, change the way you see things, sometimes bring hope and sometimes instill fear. For me, having studied law and lived with the code in hand, one of these is "The Trial" by the immense Kafka. Another basic, extraordinarily prophetic book was published by Orwell in 1948, titled "1984" as a play on the publishing date.

And Orwell's book came to mind as I watched, overwhelmed by this wonderful film, set precisely in 1984, and who knows if that’s a coincidence. The events take place in the German Democratic Republic, in East Berlin before the fall of the wall. Here, Big Brother is not a television game show, but something a bit more serious, and it's called the Stasi (Ministry for State Security): these are the country's secret services, tasked with monitoring their citizens to prevent anyone from getting the idea of jumping the wall or, seduced by Western subversive ideas, daring to spread and advocate them. The film is ruthless in showing with what skill Big Brother’s eye sees everything, rummages in every corner, enters unsuspecting people's homes. Since the film is recent and perhaps still in theaters, and it's highly likely it will be shown again at film forums, I won't reveal its plot to spoil the pleasure for anyone who wants to see it, something I recommend to everyone. I will limit myself to necessary framing for the considerations I want to make.

One of the two male protagonists, Gerd Wiesler (masterfully played by Ulrich Muhe), codename HGW XX/7, is a Stasi agent, a gray and bureaucratic spy, a perfectly oiled cog in the monstrous and perfect state mechanism. The other male protagonist, the successful writer and theater director Georg Dreyman (Sebastian Koch), along with his partner and actress Christa-Maria Sieland (Martina Gedeck), is instead the one being spied on. The fact is that Dreyman is not actually a dangerous agitator, but an artist respectful of the party line, perhaps more out of convenience than real conviction, and he has only two sins: a couple of imprudent friendships with other artists who are indeed inconvenient and thus forced not to work, and above all a woman, Christa-Maria, with whom an important party member, Minister Hempf, has fallen in love. He sets the monstrous machine in motion in an attempt to find anything to ruin the writer and steal the actress from him. The man tasked with the investigation is, indeed, Agent Wiesler. Gradually, following events not unrelated to Wiesler himself, Dreyman reconsiders his position on the regime and begins to provide useful elements to include in Wiesler's reports for the investigation against him. But those who listen to Beethoven cannot lead a Revolution, Stalin said, and it turns out that Wiesler, with his spy headphones, locked in the basement, listens to Beethoven and cries. And thus the monstrous mechanism begins to jam, something in the machine no longer works as it should, Wiesler's reports become increasingly reticent...

The film, Oscar 2006 for Best Foreign Language Film, is beautiful. Chilling is the depiction of the Stasi's high level of control over its citizens, the methods to monitor and intimidate them, pushing them to betray each other and become "collaborators"; what is most disturbing is the absolute lack of any form, practiced or even just threatened, of physical violence: the interrogations, the threats, even "encouraging" imprisonment occur in an almost surreal atmosphere, the violence, the pressures on the interrogated are all psychological and implied, with an impressive mimicking of respect for rules and civil rights. The bleakness of average life under the regime is painted with great mastery through the perfect use of photography: the film lights up with vivid colors only at the end, after the fall of the wall, while before everything is dull, dim, as if covered by a layer of grey. The depiction of the deadly effects of the regime is excellent, and the film invites terrible reflections on the control of authority over people, reflections very current even for us, who, although not living under a totalitarian regime, are caught between interceptions, monitored by computers that turn on when they hear words like bomb or Islam, registered when using credit cards or ATMs, captured by millions of cameras on street corners. And we no longer even question what the limit is, how much security really justifies such invasive control measures, on one side terrified by partial, manipulated, and deliberately alarmist information, on the other anesthetized by gossip, football, fake quarrels, screams and smoke without fire overflowing from mass media, and this too is nothing more than a sophisticated means of control. It remains to ask what happens to the gray bureaucrat, what pushes him to no longer adhere to the rigid protocols, to not denounce Dreyman, realizing that he is becoming an enemy of the regime.

The film leaves the viewer’s interpretation free, avoiding a final explanation between Dreyman and Wiesler. Was it the lifesaving encounter with Art that opened the eyes of the State man? Or the realization that he was not serving the cause, but the abuse of power by a superior acting out of personal interest? Probably both. But I think it also has to do with the attempt not to stop the pleasure of watching, spying, until actually "living" with incredible empathy, the lives of others, these others who, unlike him, have a life full of passion, strength, courage, things to say and do (is this the same subtle mechanism that makes a lot of people watch if in the end Guendalina gives it to Milo?).