das leben der anderen (words are found responsible)

On Sunday night I went with SF and J to see Das Leben der Anderen (The Lives of Others). I doubt any film from the last two years has affected me has much as this one--none, certainly, since Fatih Akin's Gegen die Wand/Duvara Karşı (aka "Head On"). In fact, what I would say to you about Das Leben is what Anthony Lane wrote in his unexpectedly heartfelt review of the latter:

"All I can say is that you should see [it] and that, even if you end up hating it, there will be no denying the fact that you have been through something and that, if you are still foolish and hopeful enough to let movies get to you, the person who went into the theatre will not be quite the same as the person who comes out."

I am known to be foolish and hopeful that way, and the movie found its mark. If you've read reviews, you know the plot outline already: 1984, East Germany, a playwright--"our only non-subversive writer"--and his lover, an actress, live charmed lives, having escaped the blacklisting that has fallen on many of their fellows. But at the behest of a lecherous minister, they come under surveillance by the Stasi, the security service that at its height boasted some 90,000 employees and 300,000 informers in a population of 16 million--that's one in fifty people. A grey-faced agent--a true believer in the Party, personification of Arendt's now-clichéd line--heads the investigation. Every day he leaves his drab apartment to listen into their bugged flat from an attic above, transcribing every word and action onto neatly typewritten pages. The resulting twist--that the listener finds himself transformed by the listening--is predictable. The film, though, is not. Even the ending--which, for a few doubtful minutes, seemed about to take a maudlin turn--reneges on its false promises. I'm so used to the cheap, lazy emotional button-pushing of most cinema; I'd almost forgotten what it was to like for it to provoke the real thing.

There's a rare moment of grace in certain films, where you forget you're watching actors and listening to a scriptwriter's dialogue. It happens over and over again here: Ulrich Mühe as the Stasi agent, Captain Gerd Wiesler, turns in a finely-grained and moving performance, and Martina Gedeck, who stole my heart years ago in the silly-but-sweet Bella Martha, tears across the screen like a hungry animal in silver eyeliner. She's marvelous. Sebastian Koch (the playwright, Georg Dreyman) is also note-perfect--for all that Gedeck and Mühe make stronger initial impressions, he may have been the one who most often tricked me into believing.

There's so much more--to the film, and to say about it--but I am aware that many have not had the chance to see it, so I'll avoid details for now. The story of Wiesler's redemption is not only a political fable--it's about the subversive force of stories, about how the encounter with "the lives of others" through art and literature can change people (Rushdie, quoting Saul Bellow's barking dog: for God's sake, open up the universe a little more!) and allow them to reimagine their own lives. The film's conceit makes that encounter explicit, but anyone who has ever found a measure of salvation in a novel or painting or passage of music will recognize the expression on Mühe's face as the "Sonata for a Good Man" rises through his headphones.

As some reviewer pointed out, the characters of Wiesler and Dreyman both grapple with the agency and responsibility of being "authors" in some sense: they are strange mirrors of each other, perched at their respective typewriters. And both, as the film progresses, make a conscious decision to change the course of their own narrative. This theme inevitably recalled, for me, the poetry of Adrienne Rich, specifically "North American Time"--the source text of this blog, as it were. I've found myself returning to it often these last few weeks, in contexts professional and personal alike. As I walked home from BAM on Sunday night, these first four stanzas were on my mind again:

I
When my dreams showed signs
of becoming
politically correct
no unruly images
escaping beyond borders
when walking in the street I found my
themes cut out for me
knew what I would not report
for fear of enemies' usage
then I began to wonder

II
Everything we write
will be used against us
or against those we love.
These are the terms,
take them or leave them.
Poetry never stood a chance
of standing outside history.
One line typed twenty years ago
can be blazed on a wall in spraypaint
to glorify art as detachment
or torture of those we
did not love but also
did not want to kill

We move but our words stand
become responsible
for more than we intended

and this is verbal privilege

III
Try sitting at a typewriter
one calm summer evening
at a table by a window
in the country, try pretending
your time does not exist
that you are simply you
that the imagination simply strays
like a great moth, unintentional
try telling yourself
you are not accountable
to the life of your tribe
the breath of your planet

IV
It doesn't matter what you think.
Words are found responsible
all you can do is choose them
or choose
to remain silent. Or, you never had a choice,
which is why the words that do stand
are responsible

and this is verbal privilege