On DVD: The Lives of Others

The Lives of Others, a German film which won the Best Foreign Language Film Academy Award for the year 2006, is the story of East Germany just before glasnost, and the Secret Police whose mission was to "know everything." It follows one interrrogator/inspector, perfect (of course) in his methods and his fidelity to the state, and his unraveling while spying on a successful playwright and his actress girlfriend. It's a very observant, well-acted, highly detailed look at the terror and betrayals of living in a police state — especially one that encouraged you to turn on your friends, neighbors, and loved ones, and one that made no bones about destroying your life when it wanted to.

The film, alas, beat out the far superior Pan's Labyrinth for the Academy Award. While the two films are different, there are a lot of similarities: life and resistance under a totalitarian regime is the major focus of both. "Lives," however, lacks the imagination and depth of Pan's Labyrinth. While Lives is clear and calculated, Pan's Labyrinth is harsh and brutal in its truths, and beautiful while being ugly and cruel all at once. It's a much, much better film, but, I suppose, being a "children's tale" filled with monsters and the fanatasitcal, it wasn't "serious" enough to be worthy of an Academy Award.

I'm not even suggesting that Lives is a bad movie. I just that it's once again an example of how the Academy robs truly great films of their due. Hello E.T.! Hello Brokeback Mountain!