Reviewed by Kate Bevan
Stars Martina Gedeck, Ulrich Mühe, Sebastian Koch
Written by Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck
Produced by Quirin Berg
Certification UK 15 | US R
Runtime 137 minutes
Directed by Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck
Set in East Berlin in 1984, this remarkable film deals with love, loyalty, venality, fear and difficult moral choices with style and a quiet confidence that impresses throughout. Georg (Koch), a handsome playwright, lives with his muse and leading lady, Christa-Maria (Gedeck). She in turn is having a reluctant affair with a repellently fat culture minister, the moral black hole at the heart of the film.
The minister wishes to sabotage Georg and Christa-Maria’s relationship, so orders full surveillance on the couple, widely considered to be loyal to the state, in the hope of turning up something to destroy them. This is run by the chillingly quiet Wiesler (Muhe), who in turn reports to the venal Grubtiz. So far, so Cold War. But it’s here that this elegant film gets interesting: Wiesler finds himself drawn to Christa-Maria and, as he becomes privy to more and more of their most intimate moments, ends up protecting the couple – eventually at terrible cost to himself.
Meantime, the apparently loyal Georg is drawn into a conspiracy to write a piece denouncing the GDR’s suicide rates for the western newsmagazine Der Spiegel, while Christa-Maria’s disgust at her affair with the minister leads her to break it off, with Georg’s support, precipitating disaster. The film has a taut, low-key atmosphere that evokes the paranoia of the Cold War era. Despite this being a German-language film, it is never less than utterly compelling and believable, and is strengthened further by superb performances from the whole cast, right down to the little boy who precipitates Wiesler’s first moments of self-doubt.
It’s not always easy to watch: the emotions are powerful throughout, and there are a couple of ugly sexual encounters that neatly subvert the loving but less graphically shown sexual encounters between Georg and Christa-Maria. Nothing is gratuitous in this film: not the sex, not a single word or look. The film would be outstanding enough if it ended as disaster strikes for Georg and Christa-Maria, but there’s a remarkable coda, too, which puts some of the moral choices made by the characters into perspective. These final few minutes of the film could have been clumsy but in fact they’re beautiful: both redemptive and bittersweet. Winner of the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar this year and 33 other awards, it deserves every one.