[Sim]

I've just seen the German movie "The Lives of Others", which has won the Oscar as best non-English movie, and I am really impressed.

It tells the story of artists surveilled and harassed in 1984 totalitarian communist East Germany by the Stasi ("State Security" service), about their lives under totalitarian rule. The movie does a great job of portraying the personal and moral dilemmas the oppressed (and one of the snitchers too) are facing.

The movie is really great in all aspects, it shows are great claustrophobic 1984 East Germany, the actors are top-notch, the characters are complex and vivid, and the totalitarian oppression becomes real in its inhumane nature, both in the obvious and the subtle details. The soundtrack of the movie is wonderful.

Here the Website of the Movie.

I wonder how you, as non-Germans, perceive this movie about the topic of freedom and oppression -- for you Americans and Canadians, freedom is more an abstract concept in debate, but we Germans have a very concrete idea about it, since not even 17 years have passed since a part of our country was liberated from totalitarian oppression. The memories of a society where the state is everywhere and harasses its citizens is still vivid, and many Germans who are still alife have actually lived under these conditions.

This movie reminds us how precious freedom is, and considering this German experience, it won't take you wonder why so many Germans have no understanding for the totalitarian American practize of imprisoning and torturing innocent people at Guantanamo, or Ashcroft's plans for a Stasi-like totalitarian snitching system -- authoritarian ideas like those just hit too close to home for us.


Anyway, I strongly recommend this movie to everybody who is interested in the topic; I understand many Americans are not open for foreign movies with subtitles, but you should really give it a try. A really great movie!

And if anyone of you has seen it already, I'd appreciate your thoughts on it. Please tell me about it!