Das Leben der Anderen

For the most part of the movie, tears were coarsing down my cheeks not only in memory of experiences that I had long buried in the dark recesses of my mind, but also because of the events that led to the transformation of the stern officer of the Stasi (Ministerium für Staatssicherheit) in East Germany, Gerd Wiesler. Wiesler who has been entrusted with the task of spying on the playwright Georg Dreyman, is at first, portrayed as a stiff sponsor of the Stasi values, intent on weeding out any suspicious elements from the system. As time goes by and he becomes privy to the inner workings of Dreyman's life, he begins to fall for the playwright's charm: His knowledge of music, his musical touch, his thoughtful remarks... so much so that he sneaks into the artist's apartment to steal a volume of Bertolt Brecht's poetry:

..."Und über uns im schönen Sommerhimmel/ War eine Wolke, die ich lange sah/ Sie war sehr weiß und ungeheuer oben/ Und als ich aufsah, war sie nimmer da" ("And above us in the beautiful summer sky, was a cloud/ which I looked at for long/It was very white and way above/ and when I looked up, it was no more")... Just picturing the configuration of a fluffy white cloud in the summer-time, at a time, when everything around you is dreary and you are so lonesome that you have to hire a prostitute to keep you company and even she is with you but for a short moment between two interludes of meaningless nakedness...

By and by, Wiesler turns into one of those whom Dreyman had earlier referred to as "those who really listen to Beethoven's music and can thus never be bad" and becomes intent on rescuing Dreyman from the clutches of the destructive Stasi. He well knows that his attempts are tantamount to risking his own carreer, but "Kunst" is above such mundane considerations. How could he let Dreyman fall into nothingness when so many other artists had already been condemned to silence in the face of the suffocation imposed by the regime? Wiesler goes on to change the transcripts on his espionage activities in a way that would portray Dreyman as propelling the Staat's ideals.

On comparing Wiesler to similar characters in the early days of the Iranian revolution, I could not help but be pained by the fact that in those days of mass arrests, hardly any of the officers in my country had any appreciation for art which would allow for that inner-transformation to occur and hence hardly any artist was saved. It is true that had Wiesler been facing the layman and not the artist, he would have remained sterner than ever, but there is no question that his transformation in the name of a value that transcends most, if not, all others, i.e, ART is still noble. After all, art bespeaks the language of, in Brechtian terms, an "ungeheuer oben" and any traces of that realm are bound to move "those who understand."