My assigned film was The Lives of Others, an Academy Award winning German film. It takes place in East Berlin and chronicles the Stasi’s surveillance of a playwright. The playwright, Georg, is in a relationship with an actress, Christa-Maria. A party leader covets Georg of Christa, and orders the Stasi to bug his apartment in attempt to destroy him. The captain who runs the operation begins to feel sympathy for his subjects.
The film deals with the struggles of an artist living under a totalitarian regime. It explores how an oppressive government will stifle creativity while a subversive subculture takes route, creating a national cognitive dissonance. Even those who are part of the regime are not satisfied with their lives. This results in the death of Christa toward the end of the film-the end of the feminine, the artistic, the left. There is a part in the film where the Stasi discuss the torture of writers by depriving them of human contact and any sort of sensory stimulation. This also leads to an expose regarding suicide under an oppressive regime, and how it is the abandonment of all hope.
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