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The Lives of Others
By Stephen Farber
Finally, it's worth seeking out one of the best foreign films of recent years, The Lives of Others. The picture has already won awards in Germany, including a prize for the leading actor, Ulrich Muehe, who gives a marvelous performance as a Stasi agent in East Berlin during the final years of the Communist regime. Muehe plays a fascinating counterpart to Gene Hackman's surveillance agent in The Conversation. Like Hackman's Harry Caul, Gerd Weisler is a lonely technical wizard who's proud of his expertise at eavesdropping. But when he is asked to find evidence to incriminate a playwright and his actress wife, Weisler begins to have qualms about his profession. He perceives the corruption of his superiors and becomes entranced by the bohemian couple he's pursuing. Gradually Weisler sets out to sabotage his own department's mission, and although he is only partly successful, he does help the playwright to survive. The film ends with a bittersweet coda that takes place after the fall of the Berlin Wall. In surveying the bond between two people who never meet, the film asks us to think about the responsibility we bear toward strangers who cross our paths. Like many of these movies, The Lives of Others is a moral drama and also an offbeat love story, one that acquires depth from its superb performances.
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