The Life of Others (Das Leben der Anderen)

I have watched a good film on TV recently. The title is "The Life of Others (Das Leben der Anderen)".
The film is set in November 1984. Gerd Wiesler who works the secret police(Stasi) of GDR is assigned to spy on Georg Dreyman who is a playwright and regarded as pro GDR government. The secret police install tapps in Dreyman's apartment. In the apartment he lives with his girlfriend Christa-Maria Sieland who is an actress. She has relation with government minister in order to keep her job. Once Wiesler starts tapping their life, he realise why he is assigned to spy on Dreyman. Because the minister is attracted to Christa, he wants to find Dreyman's fault and Dreyman to be arrested. This makes Wiesler lose his motivation for his job. Then he starts helping Dreyman and Christa. Dreyman writes an article about sucide in GDR for a western magazine "Der Spiegel", after one of his friend commits sucide. Though Wiesler was tapping the action, he acquiesces and makes false report which Dreyman was writing a story about Lenin. Once the article is published in the West, GDR and Wiesler's boss have suspicious of Dreyman. However Wiesler reports no problem. The police arrests Christa because she takes illegal drugs and interrogates her. She knows how Dreyman wrote the article. It was written by an unregistered western made typewriter which is hidden under thr floor. She had no choise but to confess in order to go on her carrier as actress. Then she is set free and the police searches for the typewriter in Dreyman's apartment. However they cannot find it in the place that Christa revealed. Wiesler hid it in advance. In shame that Christa told a lie to the police as a result and betrayed his boyfriend, she throws herself in the front of a running truck and dies. Finnaly the police gives the search up and Wiesler'tapping fails. He is degraded. After the cold war ended, Dreyman realises that his life was entirely tapped but Wiesler acquiesced. He tries to say Wiesler "thank you", but he does not directly. As a playwright, he writes a novel named "Sonata for A Good Man". Wiesler finds the book in a book shop and also finds a credit "To HGW XX/7, with gratitude" in the book. "HGW XX/7" is Wiesler's code name. When he buys the book, the sales person asks if he should wrap it as a gift. Wiesler says "No, it's for me".

This film describes difficulties of creative people such as novelist, musicians, actors and so on in Communist era. I have also sympathy the charactor of Wiesler. He is diligent but alone. Every charactors gave me deep impression. The last 10 minutes is the highlight of the story. I felt transported myself to the 1980s in GDR. I think this film is very good but someone who does not know the background of the film might lose interst.