The Spy Who Loved Spying

By RICHARD CORLISS

A dictator falls, a country is set free and in the inevitable spasm of liberation, some folks get wistful about the bad old days. It happened in Yugoslavia and to an extent in Iraq, and it broke out like a sweet fever among East Germans after the Wall came down in 1989. They called it Ostalgie--Eastalgia--and in 2003 it suffused the hit film Good Bye, Lenin! But for the imposingly named writer-director Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, Ostalgie is a sickness in need of treatment. His urgent, exceptional first feature, The Lives of Others, is the ideal antidote. It has richly earned its Oscar nomination for Best Foreign Language Film.

In 1984, the Stasi--East Germany's internal spy network--is in full fester, keeping watch on artists and political dissidents, forcing many into obeisance or jail, silence or suicide. Gerd Wiesler (Ulrich Muehe), a mousy Stasi captain, plants bugs in the home of chic playwright Georg Dreyman (Sebastian Koch) and his actress girlfriend Christa-Maria Sieland (Martina Gedeck). Wiesler and his coarser superiors have motives as complex as they are nasty: to please a party boss, to tease out scenarios of voyeuristic lust and, well, because they can. Wiesler has another reason to spy and pry: he's good at it. So when Dreyman decides to write a sub-rosa expose for a West German magazine, the spy is all ears.

Is this a political thriller? In part, yes. The film has whispered conspiracies, a typewriter smuggled inside a cake box, the sexual compromising of a beautiful woman, a violent death. But those are mere trappings of a social structure that puts everyone at mortal risk, the spies no less than the spied upon. The narrative is a noose, tightening around all the characters--and the moviegoer too.

Smartly crafted, impeccably acted, The Lives of Others packs a subtle punch, from its creepy first images to its poignant finale. It's a cure not just for Ostalgie but for any moviegoers' where-are-all-the-good-films-this-year? blues.