Movies: The Official "Movie of the Week" Club Thread IV

[KallioWeHardlyKnewYe]

Programming alert. I'm going to be traveling for the second half of December and am unlikely to post anything longer or more thoughtful around these parts than a few sentences will allow during that time.

Don't wait up for me!

I'll catch up when I return.

 

[Jevo]

Riceboy Sleeps (2022) dir. Anthony Shim

After her boyfriend gets put in psychiatric hospital due to his schizophrenia, and ultimately commits suicide there. So-Young decides to move from Korea to Canada with her six year old son Dong-Hyun. So-Young gets a job in a factory where she gets sexually harassed by some coworkers, but also gets a community with the fellow immigrant women working there, korean and otherwise. Dong-Hyun speaks no English but still goes to a suburban elementary school, where he gets relentlessly teased by the other kids, who seemingly haven't seen a non-white person before and for whom mayo is an exotic food, for being asian, for the food he eats, for his name. As he gets older he actively tries to surpress his korean heritage.

Riceboy Sleeps doesn't shy away from showing the ugly parts of moving to another country. Dong-Hyun has a terrible time facing racism almost constantly throughout his childhood. But direct and systemic racism. So-Young tries her best be a good mother for him, but often comes up short compared to what his emotional needs are. It doesn't help him that she doesn't want to talk about their past in Korea, which further alienates him from his heritage, leaving him without roots. Anthony Shim lets the camera roll, even when things are uncomfortable, and it works well to put the viewer in the same state of wanting to get away from the situation, that the characters are no doubt feeling.

I worried that the movie would take a turn for the melodramatic when So-Young got her cancer diagnosis, but I am happy that it didn't. It stayed grounded. Even the end felt emotionally genuine, even if it was a bit on the nose.

I really liked the first half of the movie. I feel it's a great piece of social realist cinema from an immigrant point of view. It shows the hardships of the immigrant experience, both from an adult and a child point of view. The second half I didn't feel was quite as strong. I can see why Anthony Shim made it like that. He gave himself a very hard task of showing a young person rediscovering their heritage, living it, taking pride in it, as a way to gaining self confidence and finding out who you are as a person. It's something that's very hard to show on film. But I think he makes it work quite well, even though it's slightly contrieved. But to me it doesn't flow as naturally as the first half. But I also can't see how Shim could have told this story in a better way. I'm interested to see where his career goes from here. I hope his next venture will be just as inspired as this one.

 

[kihei]

Programming alert. I'm going to be traveling for the second half of December and am unlikely to post anything longer or more thoughtful around these parts than a few sentences will allow during that time.

Don't wait up for me!

I'll catch up when I return.

I don't know. A Christmas break seems like a pretty good idea to me. Enjoy your travels and season's best.

 

[Jevo]

The Lives of Others (2006) dir. Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck

1984. East Berlin. Stasi is key compenent of the state's repression of the people, and it keeps growing every year, now spanning several hundred thousand employees and informants. Gerd Wiesler is an experienced Stasi officer, skilled in both surveillance, interogation and teaching of new Stasi operatives. He is ordered by his friend and superior Grubitz, to spy on playwright Georg Dreyman. A man who seems a model East German citizen. No known history of ever saying anything controversial about East Germany or communism. Wiesler is intrigued by the case, and wants to do the surveillance personally. He is however diasppointed, when he learns the real reason for the surveillance is not any concrete suspicions towards Dreyman. It's however ordered directly by the minister of culture, Bruno Hempf, who is interested in Dreyman's girlfriend, the actress Christa-Maria Sieland. This knowledge leads Wiesler to gain sympathy for Dreyman and Sieland. Which at first leads him to orchestrate that Dreyman discovers the affair between Sieland and Hempf, but he also convinces Sieland to return to Dreyman. Later it causes Wiesler to conceal Dreyman writing an anti-East German article, which is published in a West German paper.

In a morbid sort of way, I find Stasi very interesting. It's an organisation which grew very fast in few years, and was an ever growing bureaucracy, and often Stasi itself, was what was fueling it's every expanding bureaucracy. It's seems to be me, that it was an organisation which had an ever growing internal paranoia. It saw anti-communist behaviour and dissenters everywhere. It was only a matter of catching them in the act. This paranoia required more surveillance, more informants, more agents. This caused more arrest which caused more paranoia etc. I was in Berlin last fall, and visited the Stasi museum in their old headquarters. It was a scary and enlightening experience, and I would recommend it to anyone who ever goes to Berlin. I couldn't imagine a better movie about the topic than The Lives of Others.

The Lives of Others show the difference between two principal types of people working in this sort of system, and what happens when they clash. The true believers so to speak. Those who believe that the surveillance is of great importance, and always righteus and justified. That's Wiesler. Then there's the politicians. Those who see it for the political tool that it is, and how it can be used and abused for their own gain. That's Grubitz and Hempf. At the begining of the film Wiesler can almost be considered a worker bee who knows only how to execute the Stasi handbook and the law. But being confronted with the political reality of his assignment forces him to reevaluate what it is he is doing. It causes him to gain a conscience. Seeing this change is Wiesler is impressively powerful. Often it wouldn't be a compliment if one of the most tense moments of a film was a character writing two sentences on a typewriter. But here that's the case, and it's a great compliment to the filmmakers. Seeing Wiesler write an incorrect report for the first time is a great moment in the film, and shows the change he has been undergoing.

I doubt The Lives of Others is gonna leave my mind any time soon. It's a very powerful movie, which never overplays it's hand. The story and direction is underplayed, it allows the story to develop slowly, and for the viewer to develop their own ideas concurrently with the movie.

 

[KallioWeHardlyKnewYe]

The Lives of Others
Henckel von Donnersmarck (2006)
“Are you still on the right side?”

A dedicated German Stasi member has his beliefs and loyalties challenged while on assignment listening into the life of a playwriter. Ever the good solider, Wiesler realizes he’s not listening in because the man is a potential dissident but rather because a higher up is interested in the writer’s girlfriend. This is the initial crack that grows into a full-blown fissure driving Wiesler to put his skills to use to protect his target(s) rather than condemn them. I love that the more that Dreyman, a fiction writer, bends his writing toward fact, the more the cold facts party solider Wiesler becomes the fiction writer. It’s a clever, effective inversion. But the ruse can only last so long. Too much collective paranoia and mistrust abounds. Tragedy looms.

There is a very methodical unfolding to this. Like a detailed report. Is are dotted. Ts are crossed. It’s a disciplined style that fits the subject perfectly.

Ulrich Muhe exemplifies this approach as Wiesler. I learned in some reading after this most recent viewing that he himself was spied on by the Stasi (as many were of course), but the informers against him included his then-wife as well as co-workers. When asked about how he prepared for the role he reported said “I remembered.” A history not far removed. He died of cancer at 54 one year after this movie came out.

There is one thing I wrestle with here and that is the time-hopping coda. Every time I have seen this it throws me off. The point it makes certainly has some resonance, but it also hits me as oddly warm given the tragedy that proceeds it. Bittersweet is probably the right reading but it just doesn’t play like that to me. Loved ones died, but it’s nice to be memorialized in a book? Also it’s a bit jarring when 95% of the movie is very methodical and deliberate and the last five percent shifts to a faster, choppier rhythm. I’m making my issue here sound way worse than it actually is. There’s important information and revelations here, but it feels almost tacked on.

 

[Pink Mist]

The Lives of Others / Das Leben der Anderen (dir. Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, 2006)

The Lives of Others is a gripping and deeply human exploration of surveillance, power, and redemption in the shadows of 1984 East Berlin. Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck’s (great name) debut feature is a cinematic triumph, capturing the pervasive dread of life under an authoritarian regime while uncovering the fragile, unexpected humanity that can emerge even in the bleakest of circumstances.

The story centers on Stasi Captain Gerd Wiesler (Ulrich Mühe), a loyal and meticulous servant of the East German state. His task: to surveil celebrated playwright Georg Dreyman (Sebastian Koch) and his partner, actress Christa-Maria Sieland (Martina Gedeck), for signs of dissent. Initially cold and unemotional, Wiesler is the embodiment of the system—obedient, efficient, and devoid of personal sentiment. But as he becomes more entrenched in the lives of Dreyman and Christa-Maria, his detachment begins to erode. Their passion, vulnerability, and quiet defiance awaken a dormant conscience within him, leading to small but profound acts of rebellion.

Ulrich Mühe’s performance is extraordinary. With minimal dialogue, he conveys Wiesler’s transformation through subtle expressions and physicality—every glance and pause brimming with unspoken emotion. His journey from enforcer to silent protector is heartbreakingly real, and by the film’s conclusion, his sacrifice feels monumental despite its quiet execution.

Thematically, The Lives of Others is rich and multilayered. It explores the suffocating effects of surveillance on both the watcher and the watched, the moral compromises of living under oppression, and the redemptive power of art and empathy. The contrast between the cold, gray bureaucracy of the Stasi and the warmth of human connection in Dreyman’s world is stark, highlighting the resilience of creativity and love in the face of totalitarianism.

Technically, the film is a marvel. The muted color palette reflects the bleakness of East Berlin, while the tight framing reinforces the sense of entrapment. The sound design is particularly brilliant, with the hum of surveillance equipment and the click of typewriter keys creating an almost claustrophobic atmosphere. Gabriel Yared’s subtle score amplifies the emotional undercurrents without ever overshadowing them.

That said, the film is not without its imperfections. The film's ending may lean too heavily on sentimentality, offering a resolution that feels slightly too neat for such a complex story. While this is a valid critique, the emotional payoff is so well-earned that it’s hard to fault the film for seeking closure in its final moments.

The Lives of Others is ultimately a story about humanity in its most profound sense: the capacity for change, for courage, for quiet defiance. It reminds us that even within the cold machinery of authoritarianism, there is room for empathy and redemption. This is not a film that glorifies grand gestures; instead, it celebrates the power of small, silent acts of resistance and kindness.

Haunting, thought-provoking, and deeply moving, The Lives of Others is a testament to the enduring strength of human compassion. It’s a film that stays with you long after the credits roll—a poignant reflection on what it means to truly live, even under the weight of oppression.

 

[kihei]

The Lives of Others (2006) Directed by Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck

This story of a Stasi agent assigned to monitor a possibly subversive playwright in East Germany likely finds a place in Germany's all-time Top Ten movies. It is one of the rare subtitled European films that received virtually unanimous respect and acclaim in North America. Everybody loved it. And I can still see why. The story is a compelling one, the atmosphere suitably gray and oppressive, and the suspense has a nice steady build to it. If there is a flaw, I would say it is Sebastian Koch as Dreyman, the playwright, who communicates stress with the same all-purpose squint. At the time, I ranked The Lives of Others as the third best movie of 2006 behind two absolute masterpieces that rank among the best movies of the century, Tsai Ming-liang's I Don't Want to Sleep Alone and Jia Zhangke's Still Life. In other words, high praise in a great year.

Re-watching The Lives of Others, the plot development seems a little clunkier than I remember it, which only might indicate how emotionally invested I was in the film while seeing it for the first time. Part of the problem might have been inexperience on the part of von Donnersmarck whose editing is not the smoothest that I have ever seen in his first feature film. (He only directed two more movies, including his wildly unlikely follow-up four years later The Tourist, which I was one of the few to like even a little bit). What did surprise me, though, is how much less readily did I take to the Stasi Agent Wiesler's conversion, his realization of his own moral culpability in trying to find evidence to destroy a good man. This is no fault of the actor Ulrich Muhe, who gave a very persuasive performance despite knowing at the time that he had a terminal illness. What bothered me a little during this viewing is that the conversion seems absolutely necessary as plot development but not as flawlessly executed as I remember it the first time that I saw the movie. Is there really enough there to believe Wiesler's massive change of heart? This unexpected realization on my part isn't close to being enough to compromise my estimation of the movie's worth, but it does show how a powerful film can influence one's emotions to the extent that it becomes difficult to see potential blemishes.

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