The Lives of Others, a powerful tale of life in East Germany--but how faithful to reality?
How can a smell become extinct? A country, yes. East Germany, the Communist state named 'the German Democratic Republic', vanished from the atlas in 1990. Created out of what had been the Soviet occupation zone of Germany after Hitler's defeat, it became a heavily armed dictatorship but never looked as if it could survive without Soviet backing. And yet it did have its own authentic scent, a spicy reek brewed out of People's Cleaning Fluid, two-stroke petrol, brown-coal briquettes and cheap police tobacco.
Strange enough that the state has gone, with its flag and anthem and uniforms. But how can I accept that I will never again breathe that whiff which said: You are entering 'Stasiland', and nowhere else on earth? Can a republic of 17 million people, 300,000 secret policemen or informers and five million personal files melt away without leaving even a tang in the air?
But The Lives of Others, the masterly film by Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, is almost as good as the smell. From oblivion, it resurrects East Germany and especially East Berlin, an urban landscape I knew well. During the 1960s, I was The Observer's correspondent in Germany. I lived in the western half of divided Berlin, split into two cities since the GDR built the Wall in 1961 to stop escapers, but I spent a great deal of time trying to report from 'the other side'.
Much of that time leaked away in windowless huts or dim corridors as I waited to get my passport back and my day-visa stamped. Nothing to read, as West Berlin papers could not be brought in. But once a jack-booted guard at Checkpoint Charlie noticed from her passport that it was my daughter's third birthday. He strode outside and silently came back with a marigold for her, plucked from a flower-tub next to the Wall. For a few moments, time went faster.
'Over there', I endured dummy press conferences with no questions allowed, and unusable interviews with ranting ministers. Sometimes there were long trudges over broken pavements to meet someone who could tell me about recent arrests, or about protest letters signed by these writers but not those. Sometimes there were parties, more Russian than German in style, where people sang and wept, drank vodka and tea, and recited syllogisms about the power of truth and the truth of power.
This is the world of The Lives of Others. ...
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Strange enough that the state has gone, with its flag and anthem and uniforms. But how can I accept that I will never again breathe that whiff which said: You are entering 'Stasiland', and nowhere else on earth? Can a republic of 17 million people, 300,000 secret policemen or informers and five million personal files melt away without leaving even a tang in the air?
But The Lives of Others, the masterly film by Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, is almost as good as the smell. From oblivion, it resurrects East Germany and especially East Berlin, an urban landscape I knew well. During the 1960s, I was The Observer's correspondent in Germany. I lived in the western half of divided Berlin, split into two cities since the GDR built the Wall in 1961 to stop escapers, but I spent a great deal of time trying to report from 'the other side'.
Much of that time leaked away in windowless huts or dim corridors as I waited to get my passport back and my day-visa stamped. Nothing to read, as West Berlin papers could not be brought in. But once a jack-booted guard at Checkpoint Charlie noticed from her passport that it was my daughter's third birthday. He strode outside and silently came back with a marigold for her, plucked from a flower-tub next to the Wall. For a few moments, time went faster.
'Over there', I endured dummy press conferences with no questions allowed, and unusable interviews with ranting ministers. Sometimes there were long trudges over broken pavements to meet someone who could tell me about recent arrests, or about protest letters signed by these writers but not those. Sometimes there were parties, more Russian than German in style, where people sang and wept, drank vodka and tea, and recited syllogisms about the power of truth and the truth of power.
This is the world of The Lives of Others. ...