Orwell, take that

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: The Lives of Others begins in 1984 with Captain Gerd Weisler (codename HGW/ XX 7) entrusted to spy on the lives of East German playwright Georg Dreyman and his fabulous girlfriend Christa-Maria Sieland.

Loyalist Weisler, a member of the Stasi, the secret police of East Germany, soon comes to know the real reason for the snoop order — a minister is smitten with Sieland and wants some dirt on Dreyman, read pro-West German sentiments, to nail him. But unlike Orwell’s 1984 where the protagonist Winston Smith rebels and is then brain-washed to love the Big Brother, Weisler, played brilliantly by the late Ulrich Muhe, travels in quite another direction. Weisler slowly, quietly becomes involved in the lives of Dreyman and Sieland, and is soon their prime protector. In the course of the film, the Berlin wall will fall and Weisler, who is demoted to Department M to steam-open letters all day, now goes about the city delivering newspapers. Dreyman, in the meantime, comes to know of Weisler when the Stasi files were opened to the public and realises the extent of his help. He writes a book and dedicates it to HGW/XX 7, “with gratitude”.

There are many moving moments in the film — for example, when Weisler, whose face never reflects any emotion, is listening to Dreyman on the piano after a fellow playwright’s suicide, a tear rolls down; later, when he goes to buy Dreyman’s book and the boy at the counter asks whether he wants it gift-wrapped, he simply says, “no, this one’s for me”. First-time director Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck won the Oscar for the best foreign film in 2007 and a slew of other awards. Besides a tight script and near flawless storytelling, the camera of Hagen Bogdanski and the music of Gabriel Yared (English Patient) are brilliant.