History Film / TheLivesOfOthers

The film takes place in [[UsefulNotes/TheEighties 1984]] in state-socialist UsefulNotes/EastGermany and tells the story of Captain Gerd Wiesler (Ulrich Mühe), a stoic officer of the SecretPolice, Ministerium für Staatssicherheit (also known as UsefulNotes/TheStasi). His job is to find and interrogate "enemies of socialism", people with Western sympathies or just plain wrong opinions. He is ordered by friend and superior Anton Grubitz (Creator/UlrichTukur) to carry out a spying operation against playwright Georg Dreyman (Creator/SebastianKoch), whom they suspect is not what he seems. Wiesler and his men install numerous microphones in Dreyman's apartment, and his life is filled with sitting in the attic, listening in on Dreyman and his girlfriend, actress Christa-Maria Sieland (Creator/MartinaGedeck).

* DefectorFromCommieLand: Dreyman and the other writers use this to test whether his apartment is bugged. Paul has an uncle in West Berlin who frequently visits. They loudly discuss a plan in detail to smuggle him out. Wiesler does not report this to the border checkpoint, and when the car receives no extra searches, they assume the apartment is not bugged. Wiesler is later surprised when he realizes that Paul is still there, as he believed it was a genuine escape attempt.

* AutoErotica: The minister rapes Christa-Maria with him in his car.

* LivingLieDetector: Wiesler, as shown in the early interrogation scene that is also an EstablishingCharacterMoment. He notes that innocent people will get angry when they're interrogated, and also that their stories tend to change as they reconstruct events. Guilty people get weepy and quiet, and they repeat their stories by rote because they're cover stories, not the truth. The man being interrogated eventually cracks under torture and confesses, though the audience is never shown if this confession is true or not[[note]]The approach described by Wiesler here is absolutely ideal… for extracting a FalseConfession. It's ''very'' poorly suited to getting at the actual truth.[[/note]]

* SexualExtortion: The minister rapes Christa-Maria. She knows that he has to power to end her acting career if she does not agree.

* AutoErotica: The minister forces Christa-Maria to have sex with him in his car.

* KarmaHoudini: After coercing Christa into sex she was clearly repulsed by and vindictively ruining hers and other peoples' lives, not much happens to Minister Hempf. Sure, he loses power after the fall of the Berlin Wall but when Dreyman meets him by chance a couple of years later, he is doing pretty well for himself. In the film commentary, the director points out that this is [[TruthInTelevision based in reality]], as many of the East German bigwigs landed on their feet after the fall of the UsefulNotes/BerlinWall.

* SexualExtortion: The minister forces Christa-Maria to have sex with him. She knows that he has to power to end her acting career if she does not agree.

* LivingLieDetector: Wiesler, as shown in the early interrogation scene that is also an EstablishingCharacterMoment. He notes that innocent people will get angry when they're interrogated, and also that their stories tend to change as they reconstruct events. Guilty people get weepy and quiet, and they repeat their stories by rote because they're cover stories, not the truth. The man being interrogated does the latter, and sure enough, he really did help a friend escape to the West.[[note]]The approach described by Wiesler here is absolutely ideal… for extracting a FalseConfession. It's ''very'' poorly suited to getting at the actual truth.[[/note]]

* ProductPlacement: ''Der Spiegel (The Mirror)'' , one of Germany's most prominent news magazines, is a major plot point. They even created the cover of the suicide issue used in the film, ensuring it met with their art standards.

* AntiHero: Wiesler is working for the bad guys, but the story is about his journey into heroism.

''The Lives of Others'' won seven Deutscher Filmpreis awards and the Oscar for Best Foreign Film in 2006. It has been praised for its portrayal of Stasi, its employees and its victims as human beings trapped in an unforgiving dictatorship. Although the story is widely considered [[{{Narm}} narmy]] by actual survivors of Stasi methods (only eight Stasi agents have ''ever'' been publicly known to regret their actions, help their victims or rebel in any form against the system as Wiesler does), the film gives a very heartfelt portrayal of life in socialist East Germany.

''The Lives of Others'' won seven Deutscher Filmpreis awards and the Oscar for Best Foreign Film in 2006. It has been praised for its portrayal of Stasi, its employees and its victims as human beings trapped in an unforgiving dictatorship. Although the story is widely considered [[{{Narm}} narmy]] by actual survivors of Stasi methods (no Stasi agent has ''ever'' been publicly known to regret his actions, let alone help his victims), the film gives a very heartfelt portrayal of life in socialist East Germany.

* ArtisticLicenseHistory: Wiesler's actions would have been impossible for any real Stasi agent, because the Stasi knew that the watchmen have to be watched even more closely than the civilian populace - Stasi agents worked in mutually-surveilling teams when on duty, and were watched off-duty as well. However, the film is presented more as a morality play, interested in questions about human nature and not so much in history.

* BigBadFriend: {{Played with}} and ultimately subverted with Anton Grubitz. Despite initially coming across as a close friend and colleague of Wiesler, it soon becomes apparent that Grubitz views Wiesler as little more than a tool for his own political advancement.

* BrokenPedestal: Wiesler [[WellIntentionedExtremist truly believes in surveillance of citizens]] to weed out malcontents, but he's shaken when the minister starts abusing their power just to get in a married woman's pants.

* LivingLieDetector: Wiesler, as shown in the early interrogation scene that is also an EstablishingCharacterMoment. He notes that innocent people will get angry when they're interrogated, and also that their stories tend to change as they reconstruct events. Guilty people get weepy and quiet, and they repeat their stories by rote because they're cover stories, not the truth. The man being interrogated does the latter, and sure enough, he really did help a friend escape to the West.[[note]]The approach described by Wiesler here is absolutely ideal... for extracting a FalseConfession. It's ''very'' poorly suited to getting at the actual truth.[[/note]]

* LivingLieDetector: Wiesler, as shown in the early interrogation scene that is also an EstablishingCharacterMoment. He notes that innocent people will get angry when they're interrogated, and also that their stories tend to change as they reconstruct events. Guilty people get weepy and quiet, and they repeat their stories by rote because they're cover stories, not the truth. The man being interrogated does the latter, and sure enough, he really did help a friend escape to the West.