In the film “The Lives of Others,” a successful 40-year-old playwright, Georg Dreyman, lives in 1984 East Berlin with his lovely stage actress girlfriend, Maria-Christina. Dreyman is an artist, but also a believer in the socialist revolution. His plays support rather than subvert the regime. Nevertheless, he is placed under 24-hour surveillance by the Stasi -- the self-proclaimed “sword and shield” of the party but better known by the people as “bad men who put people in jail” -- because there is something fishy in his squeaky cleanness.
We later discover that the real reason for the surveillance is that the odious party bigwig, Bruno Hempf, is having sex with the unwilling, but weak, Maria-Christina. Somewhere in Hempf’s twisted psyche the porcine minister apparently believes that he might be less repellant to Maria-Christina if he can rid her of the handsome Dreyman.
The film’s hero is Captain Weisler, who is charged with the surveillance of Dreyman. Weisler is advised of Hempf’s motives in due course by his former classmate, now superior, Lieutenant Colonel Grubitz. Captain Weisler questions this use of the Stasi’s surveillance power by rather naively asserting that Stasi operations should benefit the party. “How better to benefit the party than to benefit the individuals within it?” counters the sunny Grubitz. And so the surveillance continues, but with perhaps less conviction on the part of our hero.
Captain Weisler’s conversion from ruthless interrogator and Stasi operative to “a good man” is rendered shortly thereafter. Captain Weisler listens in on a phonecall that Dreyman receives wherein Dreyman is advised of the suicide of his friend, a black-listed director. We had previously seen the black-listed director’s angst in two scenes, the first taking place at the director’s office, piled high with books on all sides, where he smokes and muses to Dreyman on the uselessness of his life. “What is a director who cannot direct?” he asks. Then, at Dreyman’s 40th birthday party, the director isolates himself on the couch and rejects all overtures from fellow partygoers. When Dreyman gets after the director for his anti-social behavior, the director merely perseverates on the same theme: “I cannot socialize because I am not currently involved in a directing project. My work is in the past. My future has been taken from me,” and so on.
The suicide takes place a scene or two later. It is not a surprise.
But back to the conversion of our hero. Dreyman hangs up the phone (and so does Captain Weisler, whose surveillance resumes on the headphones by which he listens in on all the goings-on at Dreyman’s apartment). Dreyman turns to the upright piano, pulls out a piece of music titled “Sonata for a Good Man,” and though we have heretofore seen no indication that Dreyman is a pianist, he now sits down and executes the piece flawlessly. Maria-Christina appears while he plays, offering her silent consolation. And then we cut to Weisler, headphones on, visibly moved by the the music. Dreyman then waxes philosophical to Maria-Christina, regaling her with a Lenin anecdote, namely, that Lenin was supposed to have said that he could not have finished the revolution had he listened over-much to Beethoven’s Appassionata piano sonata. And Dreyman asks, “Can anyone who listens, really listens, to the Appassionata, be a bad man?”
Apparently the answer is no. Captain Weisler, having “listened, really listened” to Sonata for Good Man, is henceforth a good man.
I fear the film’s faith in the transformative power of art may be a tad overstated. I am reminded of the wonderful scene in Godfather II in which Vito Corleone, at the opera, tears streaming down his face while the music soothes his savage breast, nevertheless attends to business. We watch as the don acknowledges with due appreciation the report of his henchman, at a most moving part of the aria no less, that his enemy now sleeps with the fishes. Perhaps the salutary benefit of music adheres more in Beethoven and less in Verdi?
Or perhaps the German heart is softer than the Italian. Whatever the explanation, it hardly matters. The film is fabulous. It is a tightly-scripted, satisfying story with a handsome leading man who looks particularly beguiling in loungewear. It also boasts an unsung hero who is sung in the end, if only secretly.
Yet I wondered about the suicides, of which there were two. The first is recounted above. The second is that of Maria-Christina. Like the director, Maria-Christina believes that she is an actress and, apparently, nothing else. She cannot live if she cannot act. When in a moment of courage she decides to standup the odious Hempf, he behaves as any piggish spurned lover would -- given the power -- and has her arrested. The choice she is given is A: rat out Dreyman, or B: never act on any stage again. (She delicately explores Option C, i.e., an accommodation that she and her interrogator, the ever-cheery Lieutenant Colonel Grubitz might find mutually agreeable. Grubitz regretfully advises her that this avenue, which under ordinary circumstances would be a most attractive possibility, is foreclosed due to the gravity of the offense that she has given to the very bigwig Hempf.) Maria-Christina is a great actress, so . . . She opts to rat out her true love. She then commits suicide.
I couldn’t help but wonder: Why not at least explore Option B before taking Option A? (Or, if one were going to commit suicide anyway, why not do so without first ratting out your true love?) Could it really be so bad to just live, and not act? To simply be, and not do?
There are many things that I fear. But I have to say that being severed from what I “do” is not one of them. If Grubitz said to me, “Give us what we want or you will never practice law again,” I guess I’d say, well, you’re going to have to do better than that.
But I digress. Back to our hero, the fearless Captain Weisler. He has been transformed into a good man, so needless to say he intervenes appropriately on behalf of Dreyman and Maria-Christina. Unfortunately, due to a big misunderstanding, he cannot prevent the suicide. Nor can he save himself.
Turns out the cheerful Grubitz is not all smiles and sunshine. He has an uncanny, unsettling way of seeing into the hearts of his underlings. He has not advanced in the party for no reason. He knows that Captain Weisler has intervened on behalf of Dreyman, though he cannot prove it. So when the operation is terminated, and the Stasi have found no evidence to incriminate Dreyman, Grubitz matter-of-factly informs Weisler that his career is over. He will spend the rest of his productive years steaming letters open in a basement cubicle.
Captain Weisler does not react to this news in the artist’s way, that is, by committing suicide. In fact when we see him next, which we are told his four years hence, he is in fact in a basement cubicle steaming open envelopes. He performs this task with the same efficiency as ever he applied to his surveillance responsibilities.
But Weisler is not a letter-opener. Nor is he an interrogator. Nor is he a Stasi captain, soon-to-be major. He is just -- nothing. Or perhaps more precisely, he is a man who, for whatever reason, acts courageously in a particular circumstance. And then simply lives his life. We are entitled to infer, from the fact that he remained extant four years after receiving the bad news from Grubitz, that Weisler did not experience the same despair as did the director and the actress at being severed from his professional identity. He has no existential queries such as, “What is an interrogator who cannot interrogate?”
So the lesson I take from it all is: We would be wise -- or at least less likely to commit suicide -- to not overly identify with what we do. Thoughts?
