The recent Academy Awards gave me pause to consider the best films I have seen in the past year. Alas, it was not one of this year’s nominated movies for Best Feature Film. But it is one that won an Oscar for Best Foreign Film in 2006: The Lives of Others. It is tempting to shy away from movies with sub-titles, especially when one is renting a DVD to watch on a television screen. This movie more than rewards the time and effort.
The Lives of Others deals with the repression in communist East Germany. On a deeper level, the film is about the flowering of human compassion, love and beauty in spite of the tyrannies of this lifeless regime. I recently read a nice review of The Lives of Others in Books and Culture: A Christian Review. The review is by Paul Cantor, an English Professor at the University of Virginia. Below is an excerpt:
There is a great deal that is dark about The Lives of Others, both in its background and in the film itself, but lest I give the impression that it is some ponderous German art film, to be suffered through, not enjoyed, I hasten to add that on one level it is a spy thriller, with enough twists and turns to keep audiences on the edge of their seats. And although the film is deeply depressing in what it shows about totalitarianism, it also is uplifting in what it shows about the human capacity to resist and even triumph over the most tyrannical system.