Movie Review - "The Lives of Others"

The Sound of Eavesdropping and Walls Falling

"The Lives of Others" won the Best Foreign Film Oscar over such worthy contenders as "After the Wedding" and "Pan's Labyrinth," so I wanted to see what won out and why. It's the story of an operative in the East German Secret Police who is presented to us as an extremely cold, but very competent interrogator who will over the course of an intense hours-long questioning extract information from "enemies of the state" psychologically. He is approached by the authorities to spy on a playwright who is supposedly sympathetic to the state, and his mistress, who has attracted the attention of a bureaucrat high up in the ministry. The op, named Wiesler (or HGW XX/7) sets up an elaborate net of microphones in the playwright's apartment and begins a 24-hour monitoring for anything that might discredit him. To reveal anything more would be to give away too much information. Suffice it to say that the mission takes an unexpected turn, and in the end everyone is compromised until finally the Wall comes tumbling down and the story becomes something of its own Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Good enough (though not as good as Coppola's "The Conversation"), but "The Lives of Others" does a poor job of pinning down who feels what and when. I couldn't help thinking couldn't be the first scenario of its kind that would lead to similar consequences. But one shouldn't quibble, I guess, when the script is so literate and the performances so subtle that one has to study every line in every actor's face. So, it's a good film. though a flawed one, and for that, I'd rather have seen "Pan's Labyrinth" win.

"The Lives of Others" is a matinee ticket.

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On Video:
"Infamous" There've been competing underwater worker movies, meteor movies, volcano movies, Mars movies, Wyatt Earp movies (and avoided competing King Kong and Alexander the Great movies) but of all the subjects in all the world for Hollywood to glom onto in a feeding frenzy of competition, the unlikeliest is the story of Truman Capote's self-possessed tussle writing "In Cold Blood." The first released was "Capote" featuring Phillip Seymour Hoffman's Oscar-winning performance. The last out of the gate was "Infamous" with Toby Jones' portrayal of the writer far more flamboyant and less "interior." There are just as many well-known actors in both movies, but "Infamous" feels like stunt-casting, with Sandra Bullock as "Nell" Lee, Sigourney Weaver as the socialite wife of William Paley, and an out-there Juliet Stevenson as Diana Vreeland. Daniel Craig is all wrong as Perry Smith in age, power and accent. Ultimately, both films leave the impression that Capote is a selfish bastard willing to sacrifice anything (including himself) for fame and fortune, but "Capote" drives the point home more fiercely, and with just the appropriate amount of a sense of tragedy. "Infamous" merely wallows.

"Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Rickey Bobby" It's a movie as dumb as a stump, but in its own way it's a little miracle with the majority of performers ad-libbing their lines; One of the joys of the DVD presentation is watching Will Farrell, John C. Reilly, Sasha Cohen, and the other actors trying out new lines and new interpretations at the spur of the moment. It's truly a movie built on a wing (or a spoiler) and a prayer and shaped in the editing room. I guess when you're recording on Hi-Def Video rather than film you can do as many takes as you want without stopping. It's a testament to the actors and behind-the-camera folks that they could make this jigsaw puzzle work as well as it does. It may be sporadic, but it does generate belly-laughs.