Lives of Others : (das Leben der Anderen)2022

"Annie Ring's study offers a fresh approach to the remarkable German film The Lives of Others (2006), known for its compelling representation of a Stasi surveillance officer and the moral and ethical turmoil that results when he is ordered to spy on a playwright and his actress lover. Annie Ring explores the film's aesthetic qualities, sets it in its historical and intertextual contexts, and evaluates the heated politics surrounding its reception. She analyses The Lives of Others' cinematography, mise-en-scène and editing, tracing connections with Hollywood movies such as Casablanca in the film's portrayal of an individual rebelling against a brutal dehumanising regime. Drawing on several archival sources, including original East German artefacts, music that accompanies the film's narrative and primary research from the Stasi files themselves, she explores the film's strong but much-disputed claims to historical authenticity. She also considers its use of the conventions of melodrama and the role played by German film stars in the film's success. Her close reading of the film emphasizes the complexity of the film's relationship to questions of political history and the role of the arts in shaping individual and collective experience. The way the film tracks the world-changing political shift that took place at the end of the Cold War- away from the collective dreams of socialism and towards the dreams of the private individual - is what makes it at once widely appealing and fascinatingly problematic. It is also what makes The Lives of Others a crucial film for thinking at the horizon between film and recent world history."--