Movies I Like: The Lives of Others
One of the most depressing things about living in the US these last seven years is having been witness to our government losing trust in its own citizens. Whether or not that distrust had its humble beginnings after WWII and the early days of the cold war or during the Nixon Era is irrelevant because what is now happening is that we, as citizens, are beginning to feel the crunch. We are only now beginning to really get the sense that our government is gradually turning against us and is willing to start playing dirty with us. Dissent used to be an American ideal, but now the government appears to be so worried about dissent they're beginning to take notes. And we, on the other hand, are beginning to be careful about what we say and who we say it to, and some of us are consciously worried about who is listening on the other end. At least I am.
It seems to me self-evident that any government that would feel compelled to spy on its own citizens is engaged in knowingly doing something morally wrong and is involved in some dishonorable business in how it relates to its own population. In such times, the government, self-aware and self-conscious, behaves like the kid stealing a cookie from the cookie-jar on top of the fridge, peeking around to make sure no one is watching and all the while feeling the burning guilt inside. It seems to me that if the government conducts itself honorably toward its citizens, it should have nothing to fear from them, except maybe from some fringe and fanatical elements that have always been and always will be a part of a free-society. However, if the government is behaving dishonorably toward its own citizens, then its concerns may, in fact, be warranted. It is then that the government must devote great effort to subverting that discontent, lest revolution should arise; though subverting the discontent doesn't necessarily mean it will alter its own bad conduct---it may choose to deploy its police force instead.
These days our government appears to be engaged in some dastardly business that runs counter not only to the principles that founded our nation and have distinguished us as Americans, but also runs counter to the sensibilities of the majority of good American citizens. Some of us are sickened by what our government is doing, at least so far as what we know it is doing and imagining the rest, and are rightly voicing our grievances, even though our complaints appear to be falling on the ears of a deaf and dumb congress. And, as the dissent grows, the government is taking notice. That they haven't shipped me and others like me off to a gulag yet is not an indication that they won't one day decide to do so. I, however, recognize banishment to a gulag as one of my possible futures, should things continue as they have, and I'm willing to accept that fate.
So, it is with these thoughts in mind that I watched "The Lives of Others" the other night, probably one of the best films I've seen in a long, long time. My imagination is somehow able to picture a world like East Germany in 1984, but as I watched the film I became gravely aware of the fact that all of my most horrible imaginings were actually a reality for some people. The film really struck a nerve with me, right from the beginning.
The film opens with an interrogation. A man is being interviewed in relation to the "escape to the west" of one of his neighbors. Rather than be concerned so much about the fugitive himself, who is now long gone and not going to return, the Stasi are more interested in pursuing and punishing the accomplices. So it is that they are interrogating this man, trying to find out who assisted in the defection. The real-time interview scene is juxtaposed with a classroom setting where the interrogation tape is being replayed by the instructor as an example of the effectiveness of sleep-deprivation techniques in breaking down a prisoner. When one student asks whether keeping a man awake for 40-hours straight isn't the least bit cruel, the instructor diligently marks the seating chart with an X" near the student's name as he answers the question. "When deprived of sleep, a guilty man always cries," says the instructor, "because he knows he's there for a reason."
How stupid it all is, I thought, that a government should work so hard to make prisoners of its citizens and allow them no escape. How wrong and evil must a government be that it has to literally force its people just to be citizens? If it were a good government, wouldn't its citizens be willing and uninterested in escape? And, in East Germany, imagine how much of their infrastructure was devoted solely to harboring its own citizens as prisoners (the film makes mention of 200,000 Stasi agents, an awe inspiring number when you consider that 200,000 persons employed in other, benign, professions might have made a significant and positive difference in their world). Here, in this scene, I was able to comprehend, solidly, and for the first time, that these types of governments do not care whether they are right or wrong, but are singularly focused on their own survival. Since the government isn't a living, breathing machine, then the survival is mandated and desired by those who are in power and who benefit the most from being in power. And in such a society, those men in power are most likely the least competent and least worthy of that power, and the amount of force required to maintain their power is in direct proportion to their own incompetence.
I sincerely felt at that moment that I would rather die, quite literally, than be of any service, physical or mental, to such a political machine. Unable to physically fight the machine on my own, my personal revolution would simply be to leave them a useless body to consume, absent completely of any human vitality or force. I would deny them the enjoyment of any aspect of my life or patronage. Surely, this would mean my death, but, I reasoned, even alive I would be an air breathing corpse anyway, so what a short step it would be for me to simply give up the part of me that breathes.
But, so it goes, couldn't the same be said for those who actually lived in East Germany? Isn't it an inherent attribute of humanity to welcome death over loss of liberty? Maybe so, but people continued to live under the tyranny nonetheless. Was their desire to breathe air stronger than their will to be free? I wondered. Did they hold out hope that someday the machine would eventually break down? Did they simply regard their lives as forfeit and expendable simply because they were born into it and did not know of any alternatives to life? I really can't say or understand what compels a person to survive at such a cost, assuming they recognize the price they pay, but these are the things I thought about as the story unfolded.
In the story, we follow the instructor, a mid-ranking Stasi agent, who seems to have never pondered the underlying nature of what it is he does for a living. He cares not about the right or wrong of it, and apparently doesn't consider these moral questions simply because his government has put him in its service, and he assumes, therefore, that his government is moral on that basis. He seems to unquestioningly believe that he is in the service of "the people" of his republic, and goes about his business of executing "the people's" will with precision, and it is only during the course of the film that he begins to realize who are "the people" he really serves.
He is sent by his secret police superiors to investigate a playwright who, in the investigator's own words and read of the situation, he deems as "too good" and "must be hiding something." As he investigates, though, he quickly learns that even in whispers to his actress-lover he is loyal to the party. Then, at one point, as a result of this investigation, something stirs within the investigator and he becomes emotionally involved as he learns various details of why he was sent to investigate the playwright in the first place, and through that, he begins to recognize the powers that he himself possesses and begins to use them. It's unclear exactly what motivates him, as he must have performed numerous such investigations---and why should this one be any different?---so it is apparent that his emotions aren't necessarily driven by the couple downstairs as much as they are simply the stirrings of latencies that have always existed, buried, within his own heart. Perhaps his shift was the result of being exposed to someone who was ineffably happy, despite the government's tireless efforts to make its subjects miserable. It is an interesting question to explore during the course of the film.
In the end, this bleak tale, told with a modest palette and none of the elaborate trappings of filmmaking, caused me to explore many unanswerable questions about the motivations of men and the governments who employ those men. If, for example, America continues in the manner it has for the last seven-years, might we begin to see something like this in our future? What causes a man to stand in the service of some such government, acting as an enforcer against his own fellow citizens, ready to betray his brothers and sisters? Has such an enforcer no sense of will, no sense of good, no desire to explore the wrongness of his and his government's actions, but is merely content to allow himself to blindly be put into service as he gropes for more recognition from the powerful?
Now, in 2007, we know that the experiment of socialism failed, and we also know that it was doomed to fail from the outset. Humans, denied their free-spirit, cannot maintain themselves in the service of an internally corrupt police-state for more than a single generation or so. This film, better than any other I'd seen before, demonstrated to me that the breakdown needn't come in the form of citizen's revolt, but may also come from deep within the infrastructure, where good men, occupying the stations reserved for bad men, are able to overcome their loyalty to the government and reassert their loyalty to humanity. I always believed that it was inevitable that socialism would fail, but after seeing this film, I think I have a better understanding of why it failed.
What an awesome film.
It seems to me self-evident that any government that would feel compelled to spy on its own citizens is engaged in knowingly doing something morally wrong and is involved in some dishonorable business in how it relates to its own population. In such times, the government, self-aware and self-conscious, behaves like the kid stealing a cookie from the cookie-jar on top of the fridge, peeking around to make sure no one is watching and all the while feeling the burning guilt inside. It seems to me that if the government conducts itself honorably toward its citizens, it should have nothing to fear from them, except maybe from some fringe and fanatical elements that have always been and always will be a part of a free-society. However, if the government is behaving dishonorably toward its own citizens, then its concerns may, in fact, be warranted. It is then that the government must devote great effort to subverting that discontent, lest revolution should arise; though subverting the discontent doesn't necessarily mean it will alter its own bad conduct---it may choose to deploy its police force instead.
These days our government appears to be engaged in some dastardly business that runs counter not only to the principles that founded our nation and have distinguished us as Americans, but also runs counter to the sensibilities of the majority of good American citizens. Some of us are sickened by what our government is doing, at least so far as what we know it is doing and imagining the rest, and are rightly voicing our grievances, even though our complaints appear to be falling on the ears of a deaf and dumb congress. And, as the dissent grows, the government is taking notice. That they haven't shipped me and others like me off to a gulag yet is not an indication that they won't one day decide to do so. I, however, recognize banishment to a gulag as one of my possible futures, should things continue as they have, and I'm willing to accept that fate.
So, it is with these thoughts in mind that I watched "The Lives of Others" the other night, probably one of the best films I've seen in a long, long time. My imagination is somehow able to picture a world like East Germany in 1984, but as I watched the film I became gravely aware of the fact that all of my most horrible imaginings were actually a reality for some people. The film really struck a nerve with me, right from the beginning.
The film opens with an interrogation. A man is being interviewed in relation to the "escape to the west" of one of his neighbors. Rather than be concerned so much about the fugitive himself, who is now long gone and not going to return, the Stasi are more interested in pursuing and punishing the accomplices. So it is that they are interrogating this man, trying to find out who assisted in the defection. The real-time interview scene is juxtaposed with a classroom setting where the interrogation tape is being replayed by the instructor as an example of the effectiveness of sleep-deprivation techniques in breaking down a prisoner. When one student asks whether keeping a man awake for 40-hours straight isn't the least bit cruel, the instructor diligently marks the seating chart with an X" near the student's name as he answers the question. "When deprived of sleep, a guilty man always cries," says the instructor, "because he knows he's there for a reason."
How stupid it all is, I thought, that a government should work so hard to make prisoners of its citizens and allow them no escape. How wrong and evil must a government be that it has to literally force its people just to be citizens? If it were a good government, wouldn't its citizens be willing and uninterested in escape? And, in East Germany, imagine how much of their infrastructure was devoted solely to harboring its own citizens as prisoners (the film makes mention of 200,000 Stasi agents, an awe inspiring number when you consider that 200,000 persons employed in other, benign, professions might have made a significant and positive difference in their world). Here, in this scene, I was able to comprehend, solidly, and for the first time, that these types of governments do not care whether they are right or wrong, but are singularly focused on their own survival. Since the government isn't a living, breathing machine, then the survival is mandated and desired by those who are in power and who benefit the most from being in power. And in such a society, those men in power are most likely the least competent and least worthy of that power, and the amount of force required to maintain their power is in direct proportion to their own incompetence.
I sincerely felt at that moment that I would rather die, quite literally, than be of any service, physical or mental, to such a political machine. Unable to physically fight the machine on my own, my personal revolution would simply be to leave them a useless body to consume, absent completely of any human vitality or force. I would deny them the enjoyment of any aspect of my life or patronage. Surely, this would mean my death, but, I reasoned, even alive I would be an air breathing corpse anyway, so what a short step it would be for me to simply give up the part of me that breathes.
But, so it goes, couldn't the same be said for those who actually lived in East Germany? Isn't it an inherent attribute of humanity to welcome death over loss of liberty? Maybe so, but people continued to live under the tyranny nonetheless. Was their desire to breathe air stronger than their will to be free? I wondered. Did they hold out hope that someday the machine would eventually break down? Did they simply regard their lives as forfeit and expendable simply because they were born into it and did not know of any alternatives to life? I really can't say or understand what compels a person to survive at such a cost, assuming they recognize the price they pay, but these are the things I thought about as the story unfolded.
In the story, we follow the instructor, a mid-ranking Stasi agent, who seems to have never pondered the underlying nature of what it is he does for a living. He cares not about the right or wrong of it, and apparently doesn't consider these moral questions simply because his government has put him in its service, and he assumes, therefore, that his government is moral on that basis. He seems to unquestioningly believe that he is in the service of "the people" of his republic, and goes about his business of executing "the people's" will with precision, and it is only during the course of the film that he begins to realize who are "the people" he really serves.
He is sent by his secret police superiors to investigate a playwright who, in the investigator's own words and read of the situation, he deems as "too good" and "must be hiding something." As he investigates, though, he quickly learns that even in whispers to his actress-lover he is loyal to the party. Then, at one point, as a result of this investigation, something stirs within the investigator and he becomes emotionally involved as he learns various details of why he was sent to investigate the playwright in the first place, and through that, he begins to recognize the powers that he himself possesses and begins to use them. It's unclear exactly what motivates him, as he must have performed numerous such investigations---and why should this one be any different?---so it is apparent that his emotions aren't necessarily driven by the couple downstairs as much as they are simply the stirrings of latencies that have always existed, buried, within his own heart. Perhaps his shift was the result of being exposed to someone who was ineffably happy, despite the government's tireless efforts to make its subjects miserable. It is an interesting question to explore during the course of the film.
In the end, this bleak tale, told with a modest palette and none of the elaborate trappings of filmmaking, caused me to explore many unanswerable questions about the motivations of men and the governments who employ those men. If, for example, America continues in the manner it has for the last seven-years, might we begin to see something like this in our future? What causes a man to stand in the service of some such government, acting as an enforcer against his own fellow citizens, ready to betray his brothers and sisters? Has such an enforcer no sense of will, no sense of good, no desire to explore the wrongness of his and his government's actions, but is merely content to allow himself to blindly be put into service as he gropes for more recognition from the powerful?
Now, in 2007, we know that the experiment of socialism failed, and we also know that it was doomed to fail from the outset. Humans, denied their free-spirit, cannot maintain themselves in the service of an internally corrupt police-state for more than a single generation or so. This film, better than any other I'd seen before, demonstrated to me that the breakdown needn't come in the form of citizen's revolt, but may also come from deep within the infrastructure, where good men, occupying the stations reserved for bad men, are able to overcome their loyalty to the government and reassert their loyalty to humanity. I always believed that it was inevitable that socialism would fail, but after seeing this film, I think I have a better understanding of why it failed.
What an awesome film.