--- product_id: 2244159 title: "The Lives of Others" price: "6111 som" currency: KGS in_stock: true reviews_count: 8 url: https://www.desertcart.kg/products/2244159-the-lives-of-others store_origin: KG region: Kyrgyzstan --- # The Lives of Others **Price:** 6111 som **Availability:** ✅ In Stock ## Quick Answers - **What is this?** The Lives of Others - **How much does it cost?** 6111 som with free shipping - **Is it available?** Yes, in stock and ready to ship - **Where can I buy it?** [www.desertcart.kg](https://www.desertcart.kg/products/2244159-the-lives-of-others) ## Best For - Customers looking for quality international products ## Why This Product - Free international shipping included - Worldwide delivery with tracking - 15-day hassle-free returns ## Description Product Description This critically-acclaimed, Oscar®-winning film (Best Foreign Language Film, 2006) is the erotic, emotionally-charged experience Lisa Schwarzbaum (Entertainment Weekly) calls "a nail-biter of a thriller!" Before the collapse of the Berlin Wall, East Germany’s population was closely monitored by the State Secret Police (Stasi). Only a few citizens above suspicion, like renowned pro-Socialist playwright Georg Dreyman, were permitted to lead private lives. But when a corrupt government official falls for Georg’s stunning actress-girlfriend, Christa, an ambitious Stasi policeman is ordered to bug the writer’s apartment to gain incriminating evidence against the rival. Now, what the officer discovers is about to dramatically change their lives - as well as his - in this seductive political thriller Peter Travers (Rolling Stone) proclaims is "the best kind of movie: one you can’t get out of your head." desertcart.com Nominated for a Best Foreign Language Film Oscar, this is a first-rate thriller that, like Bertolucci's The Conformist and Coppola's The Conversation, opts for character development over car chases. The place is East Berlin, the year is 1984, and it all begins with a simple surveillance assignment: Capt. Gerd Wiesler (Ulrich Mühe in a restrained, yet deeply felt performance), a Stasi officer and a specialist in this kind of thing, has been assigned to keep an eye on Georg Dreyman (Sebastian Koch, Black Book), a respected playwright, and his actress girlfriend, Christa-Maria Sieland (Martina Gedeck, Mostly Martha). Though Dreyman is known to associate with the occasional dissident, like blacklisted director Albert Jerska (Volkmar Kleinert), his record is spotless. Everything changes when Wiesler discovers that Minister Hempf (Thomas Thieme) has an ulterior motive in spying on this seemingly upright citizen. In other words, it's personal, and Wiesler's sympathies shift from the government to its people--or at least to this one particular person. That would be risky enough, but then Wiesler uses his privileged position to affect a change in Dreyman's life. The God-like move he makes may be minor and untraceable, but it will have major consequences for all concerned, including Wiesler himself. Writer/director Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck starts with a simple premise that becomes more complicated and emotionally involving as his assured debut unfolds. Though three epilogues is, arguably, two too many, The Lives of Others is always elegant, never confusing. It's class with feeling. --Kathleen C. FennessyBeyond The Lives of Others Films from Germany Other Cold War FilmsMore Arthouse Selections from Sony Pictures ClassicsStills from The Lives of Others (click for larger image) Review: The Man In the Grey Flannel Life - Made on a shoestring budget of $2 million, The Lives of Others is the most suspenseful psychological thriller I've seen in a long time, ranking with Francis Ford Coppola's The Conversation and John Frankenheimer's The Manchurian Candidate. What's more, it presents one of the strongest pro-individual, anti-collectivist themes of any movie I've ever seen--all the more surprising because it hails from, of all places, Germany. Its key lies in its title, which seems at first glance drippingly altruistic. The year, appropriately, is 1984, and Captain Gerd Wiesler (Ulrich Mühe) is in his twentieth year as an agent of East Germany's dreaded Ministry for State Security, commonly known as "Stasi." The "shield and sword" of the Socialist Unity Party, 100,000 Stasi agents and 200,000 paid informers hold the small Soviet satellite nation in a death grip, monitoring and controlling the lives of its 17 million citizens. Captain Wiesler is a meticulous interrogator, ruthlessly wearing down suspects until they confess. An instructor at the Stasi academy, he trains future agents always to be on guard. "The best way to establish guilt or innocence is non-stop interrogation," he instructs his students. "The enemies of the state are arrogant. Remember that. " A humorlessly menacing man, Wiesler leads a lonely, Spartan existence in an antiseptic, sparsely furnished apartment in a concrete high-rise that houses many fellow agents. One day at the academy, his former classmate and current boss, gregarious Lieutenant Colonel Grubitz (Ulrich Tukur), drops in with an assignment right up Wiesler's alley. One of their artists appears to be straying from the flock, and Wiesler has been assigned to watch him. However, the subject in question is no dissident, but the most celebrated playwright in East Germany, Georg Dreymann (Sebastian Koch)--a citizen so loyal to the Party that he believes his is "the greatest country on earth." Later that evening, spying from a balcony seat with opera glasses, Wiesler detects the mark of subversiveness on Dreymann's face as he watches the actors onstage performing his play. As Georg beams with proprietary approval, rising to applaud, Wiesler quietly utters to himself a one-word indictment that seals the dramatist's fate: "Arrogant." Georg lives with longtime companion Christa-Maria Sieland (Martina Gedeck)--a radiant brunette who is as celebrated an actress as Georg is a writer (and to whom Wiesler clearly takes a fancy). While they are out of their flat, Wiesler's technical team descends upon their home, bugging the place. "Operation Lazlo" is now in full swing, and Wiesler and his partner monitor their subjects around the clock from the apartment building's empty attic. At first, the surveillance of Georg and Christa appears fruitless. At a dinner party they host, a hysterical theatrical colleague (Hans-Uwe Bauer), who's suffered detention and psychological torture at Berlin's infamous Hohenschönhausen prison, accuses another director of being a Stasi informer. Georg is quick to defend the man against the accusation. Yet, through the course of his work, Wiesler makes some rather ugly discoveries about the investigation. He learns that it was ordered at the behest of national Culture Minister Bruno Hempf (Thomas Thieme), a porcine bureaucrat who's extorted sexual favors from Christa under the threat of blacklisting her. Wiesler also eventually finds his friend Grubitz's schmoozing to be a cover for vicious social climbing and discovers that Grubitz is complicit with Hempf's scheme to use Stasi as a cat's paw to eliminate Georg, his romantic rival. Within Wiesler stirs a realization previously kept repressed: that his unquestioning faith in his country has enabled not his ideal of the perfect socialist state, but the hideous arrogance of avaricious thugs who run everything in the "workers' utopia." Where once was the heel-clicking impersonality of a robot, a conscience begins to grow. Wiesler comes to view Georg and Christa and their circle of bohemian friends not as specimens under a microscope, but as real individuals, with hopes and dreams, loves and heartbreaks. Having grown a conscience, he soon also yearns for a heart, as he silently assesses the utter emptiness of his own life. Swept up in his subjects' personal lives, Wiesler's detached spying turns into voyeurism. But it isn't a perverted voyeurism, because, for the first time, the lonely captain catches a glimpse into a world of beauty, poetry, and music that is alien to his two-dimensional existence. Sympathetic to the predicament of these enemies of the state, Wiesler begins covering for them, faking his reports, and remaining silent about Georg's gradual disillusionment with the DDR after an old director friend (Volkmar Kleinert) commits suicide. He overhears an argument in which Georg confronts Christa with knowledge of her affair with Hempf. Christa--already insecure about her talent--explains that she fears being blacklisted if she breaks it off. Wiesler feels compelled to protect her: He accidentally-on-purpose runs into her in a bar, pretending to be a fan, and tells her that her performances have inspired him. "Many people love you for who you are," he says, sincerely. "You are even more yourself onstage than you are in real life." Christa dismisses his compliment, telling Wiesler he can't really know her. "Did you know that I would sell myself for art?" she asks. "But you already have art," he counters. "That would be a bad deal; you're a great artist." Though his simple compassion, he gives Christa the strength to believe in herself and renounce her extorted affair with Hempf. But in doing so, Wiesler unintentionally sets into motion a nail-biting series of events that leads inexorably both to tragedy and redemption. The Lives of Others is a superb film, top-drawer in every regard. Cathartic and ennobling, it recalls Fahrenheit 451 and We the Living in its presentation of tragic heroes forced to examine their deepest-held yet deeply mistaken principles. Hagen Bogdanski's cinematography is compelling; through subtle differences in lighting he gives Silke Buhr's sets an additional dimension that places the characters in emotional context. Shot with tungsten-balanced film, Georg and Christa's incandescently-lit apartment radiates warmth; yet by capturing with daylight film the omnipresent, fluorescent-lit settings of the Stasi world, Bogdanski renders it cold and bloodless. Gabriel Yared's simple, haunting soundtrack is the perfect evocative counterpart for the action onscreen. The acting is realistic, but never naturalistic. Martina Gedeck is a pleasure to watch, not merely because of her physical beauty, but for her impressive emotional range. Ulrich Tukur's capacity to turn on a dime from regular guy to cold-blooded manipulator is simply scary. And Sebastian Koch combines a physically imposing presence with a gentle, almost fatherly manner, reminding me of a younger Rutger Hauer. But Ulrich Mühe steals the show as Wiesler. I have never seen an actor convey such a broad range of feelings within such narrow parameters. Where a Pacino or a Steiger would explode with ferocity, Mühe underplays, moving the audience with the sudden shift of an eyebrow, the drawing-in of a cheek muscle, or the quiet fall of a teardrop that betrays his sphinx-like façade. Mühe began his acting career in communist East Germany. When government records were opened to the public after German reunification, he learned that his actress wife had been informing on him to the Stasi during the entire six years of their marriage. Clearly, he drew upon this reservoir of traumatic betrayal for this role. The Lives of Others is flawlessly crafted, completely engaging the heart and mind. Most impressive is the fact that it's Henckel von Donnersmarck's feature film debut, released while he was still at the relatively young age of 32. In a recent interview, von Donnersmarck--who saw life behind the Iron Curtain first-hand when he visited family in East Germany as a child--spelled out his thoughts on communist repression as well as independent filmmaking: "The [phrase] 'Independent film' makes sense to me only if it means that the director has full artistic control. How could a film be independent otherwise? ... I know that very well from East Germany: Until the Wall came down, the Dictatorship of the Proletariat had Final Cut on everything: novels, plays, films, even paintings. Make no mistake: hardly ever did they actually censor anything. But looking back at the art of those four decades, you can still feel the state in everything, and most of the art of that era is very impersonal and boring. Because the artists censored themselves, often without knowing it." Imagine my surprise, then, when the PC crowd at the recent Academy Awards ceremony--who feted environmental scam-artist Al Gore for his global warming crock-umentary--also bestowed the Best Foreign Language Film award upon The Lives of Others, rather than upon heavily favored Pan's Labyrinth. (I think Lives deserved the nod for Best Motion Picture overall, but I'm not unhappy that the Academy gave that award to director Martin Scorsese's The Departed, a consolation prize for snubbing him so many years.) This cinematic masterpiece is a cause for celebration. Rarely has a filmmaker burst on the scene in such total command of his material. As a directorial debut, The Lives of Others belongs in the same company as Orson Welles's Citizen Kane. I can only hope that Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck has a Touch of Evil yet to come. Review: "Can anyone who has heard this music--I mean truly heard it--really be a bad person?" - "The Lives of Others" is the best film I've seen in the last decade. Possibly in my life. And it's in German. This is the single most powerful, profound and complete commentary on how a government not only governs people--it determines the course of their lives, pursuits, even their thoughts--that I've ever seen. It is a treasure, and I can't even pronounce half the names of the characters properly. I can't think of many other movies it resembles. The director mentions Dr. Zhivago in the commentary, though only as an example of a similar genre (both are historical fiction). Maybe Reds, or The Conversation. In the world of literature, fans of Milan Kundera and Thomas Mann will be kindred to this film; it strikes a similar political-social tone, asks those Big Questions, and delves into how our daily expectations (of which politics are inextricably tied) affect who we are. And, at the same time, it lays bare the lies of fascism--of any system that claims the choices we make don't matter. Set in East Germany, the main characters (the late Ulrich Mühe, playing the spy HGW, most of all) are condemned to be human--that is, to have free will and be aware of it--in a world where State power is arbitrary, rights imagined, and the moral order absolutely equivocal. In short, to possess life when life itself is superfluous, a life that exists for the state, and never the other way around. But this is far more than a political think-piece, it is a genuine edge-of-your-seat thriller. The plot is remarkably well-paced, and strikes a perfect balance of deliberate stillness and action-oriented coincidence. Lots of moving parts, but they work together well and, ultimately, believably. In fact, some of the most harrowing parts of the plot, about a spy (Mühe) monitoring the lives of a writer, Georg (Sebastian Koch), and his actress girlfriend (Martina Gedeck), mirror Mühe's real life. In the terrific director's commentary, Henckel von Donnersmarck tells us that Mühe himself discovered, after the wall fell, that several of his fellow actors were spies planted by the Stasi, and his own wife (and mother of his child) was an informant against him and his friends for 6 years. I don't know how his own history affected him while filming, all I can say is, Mühe delivers one of the most layered, subtle and compelling performances I've ever seen, and his death breaks my heart because it reflects an immeasurable loss of talent, experience and humanity. The entire cast shines: in sensual vulnerability (Gedeck's Christa is incredible), comedy (Udo), even in alarming dourness (Georg's neighbor). There are white hats (Georg and his brave friends), and black hats (the slimey Minister) that drive the action along, but it is really the people who are far from heroic, yet who have, at times, "truly heard this music" (HGW, Christa)--they are the ones who make this film so indelibly rich and fulfilling. Condemned to make impossible choices, they don't always act honorably--and you can't take your eyes off them for a second. In addition to the superb director's commentary, the DVD includes a 30-min interview with the director, a 20-min "making of" featurette, and several deleted scenes. Subtitles can be turned off, or turned on in English, French or Spanish. ## Technical Specifications | Specification | Value | |---------------|-------| | Contributor | Charly Hübner, Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, Hans-Uwe Bauer, Herbert Knaup, Martina Gedeck, Matthias Brenner, Sebastian Koch, Thomas Thieme, Ulrich Mühe, Ulrich Tukur, Volkmar Kleinert Contributor Charly Hübner, Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, Hans-Uwe Bauer, Herbert Knaup, Martina Gedeck, Matthias Brenner, Sebastian Koch, Thomas Thieme, Ulrich Mühe, Ulrich Tukur, Volkmar Kleinert See more | | Customer Reviews | 4.6 out of 5 stars 3,800 Reviews | | Format | AC-3, Color, Dolby, NTSC, Subtitled, Widescreen | | Genre | Mystery & Thrillers | | Language | German | | Runtime | 2 hours and 18 minutes | ## Images ![The Lives of Others - Image 1](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/71oduOvJqWL.jpg) ## Customer Reviews ### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ The Man In the Grey Flannel Life *by I***P on July 21, 2007* Made on a shoestring budget of $2 million, The Lives of Others is the most suspenseful psychological thriller I've seen in a long time, ranking with Francis Ford Coppola's The Conversation and John Frankenheimer's The Manchurian Candidate. What's more, it presents one of the strongest pro-individual, anti-collectivist themes of any movie I've ever seen--all the more surprising because it hails from, of all places, Germany. Its key lies in its title, which seems at first glance drippingly altruistic. The year, appropriately, is 1984, and Captain Gerd Wiesler (Ulrich Mühe) is in his twentieth year as an agent of East Germany's dreaded Ministry for State Security, commonly known as "Stasi." The "shield and sword" of the Socialist Unity Party, 100,000 Stasi agents and 200,000 paid informers hold the small Soviet satellite nation in a death grip, monitoring and controlling the lives of its 17 million citizens. Captain Wiesler is a meticulous interrogator, ruthlessly wearing down suspects until they confess. An instructor at the Stasi academy, he trains future agents always to be on guard. "The best way to establish guilt or innocence is non-stop interrogation," he instructs his students. "The enemies of the state are arrogant. Remember that. " A humorlessly menacing man, Wiesler leads a lonely, Spartan existence in an antiseptic, sparsely furnished apartment in a concrete high-rise that houses many fellow agents. One day at the academy, his former classmate and current boss, gregarious Lieutenant Colonel Grubitz (Ulrich Tukur), drops in with an assignment right up Wiesler's alley. One of their artists appears to be straying from the flock, and Wiesler has been assigned to watch him. However, the subject in question is no dissident, but the most celebrated playwright in East Germany, Georg Dreymann (Sebastian Koch)--a citizen so loyal to the Party that he believes his is "the greatest country on earth." Later that evening, spying from a balcony seat with opera glasses, Wiesler detects the mark of subversiveness on Dreymann's face as he watches the actors onstage performing his play. As Georg beams with proprietary approval, rising to applaud, Wiesler quietly utters to himself a one-word indictment that seals the dramatist's fate: "Arrogant." Georg lives with longtime companion Christa-Maria Sieland (Martina Gedeck)--a radiant brunette who is as celebrated an actress as Georg is a writer (and to whom Wiesler clearly takes a fancy). While they are out of their flat, Wiesler's technical team descends upon their home, bugging the place. "Operation Lazlo" is now in full swing, and Wiesler and his partner monitor their subjects around the clock from the apartment building's empty attic. At first, the surveillance of Georg and Christa appears fruitless. At a dinner party they host, a hysterical theatrical colleague (Hans-Uwe Bauer), who's suffered detention and psychological torture at Berlin's infamous Hohenschönhausen prison, accuses another director of being a Stasi informer. Georg is quick to defend the man against the accusation. Yet, through the course of his work, Wiesler makes some rather ugly discoveries about the investigation. He learns that it was ordered at the behest of national Culture Minister Bruno Hempf (Thomas Thieme), a porcine bureaucrat who's extorted sexual favors from Christa under the threat of blacklisting her. Wiesler also eventually finds his friend Grubitz's schmoozing to be a cover for vicious social climbing and discovers that Grubitz is complicit with Hempf's scheme to use Stasi as a cat's paw to eliminate Georg, his romantic rival. Within Wiesler stirs a realization previously kept repressed: that his unquestioning faith in his country has enabled not his ideal of the perfect socialist state, but the hideous arrogance of avaricious thugs who run everything in the "workers' utopia." Where once was the heel-clicking impersonality of a robot, a conscience begins to grow. Wiesler comes to view Georg and Christa and their circle of bohemian friends not as specimens under a microscope, but as real individuals, with hopes and dreams, loves and heartbreaks. Having grown a conscience, he soon also yearns for a heart, as he silently assesses the utter emptiness of his own life. Swept up in his subjects' personal lives, Wiesler's detached spying turns into voyeurism. But it isn't a perverted voyeurism, because, for the first time, the lonely captain catches a glimpse into a world of beauty, poetry, and music that is alien to his two-dimensional existence. Sympathetic to the predicament of these enemies of the state, Wiesler begins covering for them, faking his reports, and remaining silent about Georg's gradual disillusionment with the DDR after an old director friend (Volkmar Kleinert) commits suicide. He overhears an argument in which Georg confronts Christa with knowledge of her affair with Hempf. Christa--already insecure about her talent--explains that she fears being blacklisted if she breaks it off. Wiesler feels compelled to protect her: He accidentally-on-purpose runs into her in a bar, pretending to be a fan, and tells her that her performances have inspired him. "Many people love you for who you are," he says, sincerely. "You are even more yourself onstage than you are in real life." Christa dismisses his compliment, telling Wiesler he can't really know her. "Did you know that I would sell myself for art?" she asks. "But you already have art," he counters. "That would be a bad deal; you're a great artist." Though his simple compassion, he gives Christa the strength to believe in herself and renounce her extorted affair with Hempf. But in doing so, Wiesler unintentionally sets into motion a nail-biting series of events that leads inexorably both to tragedy and redemption. The Lives of Others is a superb film, top-drawer in every regard. Cathartic and ennobling, it recalls Fahrenheit 451 and We the Living in its presentation of tragic heroes forced to examine their deepest-held yet deeply mistaken principles. Hagen Bogdanski's cinematography is compelling; through subtle differences in lighting he gives Silke Buhr's sets an additional dimension that places the characters in emotional context. Shot with tungsten-balanced film, Georg and Christa's incandescently-lit apartment radiates warmth; yet by capturing with daylight film the omnipresent, fluorescent-lit settings of the Stasi world, Bogdanski renders it cold and bloodless. Gabriel Yared's simple, haunting soundtrack is the perfect evocative counterpart for the action onscreen. The acting is realistic, but never naturalistic. Martina Gedeck is a pleasure to watch, not merely because of her physical beauty, but for her impressive emotional range. Ulrich Tukur's capacity to turn on a dime from regular guy to cold-blooded manipulator is simply scary. And Sebastian Koch combines a physically imposing presence with a gentle, almost fatherly manner, reminding me of a younger Rutger Hauer. But Ulrich Mühe steals the show as Wiesler. I have never seen an actor convey such a broad range of feelings within such narrow parameters. Where a Pacino or a Steiger would explode with ferocity, Mühe underplays, moving the audience with the sudden shift of an eyebrow, the drawing-in of a cheek muscle, or the quiet fall of a teardrop that betrays his sphinx-like façade. Mühe began his acting career in communist East Germany. When government records were opened to the public after German reunification, he learned that his actress wife had been informing on him to the Stasi during the entire six years of their marriage. Clearly, he drew upon this reservoir of traumatic betrayal for this role. The Lives of Others is flawlessly crafted, completely engaging the heart and mind. Most impressive is the fact that it's Henckel von Donnersmarck's feature film debut, released while he was still at the relatively young age of 32. In a recent interview, von Donnersmarck--who saw life behind the Iron Curtain first-hand when he visited family in East Germany as a child--spelled out his thoughts on communist repression as well as independent filmmaking: "The [phrase] 'Independent film' makes sense to me only if it means that the director has full artistic control. How could a film be independent otherwise? ... I know that very well from East Germany: Until the Wall came down, the Dictatorship of the Proletariat had Final Cut on everything: novels, plays, films, even paintings. Make no mistake: hardly ever did they actually censor anything. But looking back at the art of those four decades, you can still feel the state in everything, and most of the art of that era is very impersonal and boring. Because the artists censored themselves, often without knowing it." Imagine my surprise, then, when the PC crowd at the recent Academy Awards ceremony--who feted environmental scam-artist Al Gore for his global warming crock-umentary--also bestowed the Best Foreign Language Film award upon The Lives of Others, rather than upon heavily favored Pan's Labyrinth. (I think Lives deserved the nod for Best Motion Picture overall, but I'm not unhappy that the Academy gave that award to director Martin Scorsese's The Departed, a consolation prize for snubbing him so many years.) This cinematic masterpiece is a cause for celebration. Rarely has a filmmaker burst on the scene in such total command of his material. As a directorial debut, The Lives of Others belongs in the same company as Orson Welles's Citizen Kane. I can only hope that Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck has a Touch of Evil yet to come. ### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ "Can anyone who has heard this music--I mean truly heard it--really be a bad person?" *by J***K on December 15, 2007* "The Lives of Others" is the best film I've seen in the last decade. Possibly in my life. And it's in German. This is the single most powerful, profound and complete commentary on how a government not only governs people--it determines the course of their lives, pursuits, even their thoughts--that I've ever seen. It is a treasure, and I can't even pronounce half the names of the characters properly. I can't think of many other movies it resembles. The director mentions Dr. Zhivago in the commentary, though only as an example of a similar genre (both are historical fiction). Maybe Reds, or The Conversation. In the world of literature, fans of Milan Kundera and Thomas Mann will be kindred to this film; it strikes a similar political-social tone, asks those Big Questions, and delves into how our daily expectations (of which politics are inextricably tied) affect who we are. And, at the same time, it lays bare the lies of fascism--of any system that claims the choices we make don't matter. Set in East Germany, the main characters (the late Ulrich Mühe, playing the spy HGW, most of all) are condemned to be human--that is, to have free will and be aware of it--in a world where State power is arbitrary, rights imagined, and the moral order absolutely equivocal. In short, to possess life when life itself is superfluous, a life that exists for the state, and never the other way around. But this is far more than a political think-piece, it is a genuine edge-of-your-seat thriller. The plot is remarkably well-paced, and strikes a perfect balance of deliberate stillness and action-oriented coincidence. Lots of moving parts, but they work together well and, ultimately, believably. In fact, some of the most harrowing parts of the plot, about a spy (Mühe) monitoring the lives of a writer, Georg (Sebastian Koch), and his actress girlfriend (Martina Gedeck), mirror Mühe's real life. In the terrific director's commentary, Henckel von Donnersmarck tells us that Mühe himself discovered, after the wall fell, that several of his fellow actors were spies planted by the Stasi, and his own wife (and mother of his child) was an informant against him and his friends for 6 years. I don't know how his own history affected him while filming, all I can say is, Mühe delivers one of the most layered, subtle and compelling performances I've ever seen, and his death breaks my heart because it reflects an immeasurable loss of talent, experience and humanity. The entire cast shines: in sensual vulnerability (Gedeck's Christa is incredible), comedy (Udo), even in alarming dourness (Georg's neighbor). There are white hats (Georg and his brave friends), and black hats (the slimey Minister) that drive the action along, but it is really the people who are far from heroic, yet who have, at times, "truly heard this music" (HGW, Christa)--they are the ones who make this film so indelibly rich and fulfilling. Condemned to make impossible choices, they don't always act honorably--and you can't take your eyes off them for a second. In addition to the superb director's commentary, the DVD includes a 30-min interview with the director, a 20-min "making of" featurette, and several deleted scenes. Subtitles can be turned off, or turned on in English, French or Spanish. ### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Exceptional *by M***R on November 6, 2025* This is an exceptional film. Don't let the fact that it's subtitled keep you away. The dialogue is at an easy pace. This film doesn't waste a single moment. It's a story within an historical time that everyone, especially today, should see. Very well done. Bravo. --- ## Why Shop on Desertcart? - 🛒 **Trusted by 1.3+ Million Shoppers** — Serving international shoppers since 2016 - 🌍 **Shop Globally** — Access 737+ million products across 21 categories - 💰 **No Hidden Fees** — All customs, duties, and taxes included in the price - 🔄 **15-Day Free Returns** — Hassle-free returns (30 days for PRO members) - 🔒 **Secure Payments** — Trusted payment options with buyer protection - ⭐ **TrustPilot Rated 4.5/5** — Based on 8,000+ happy customer reviews **Shop now:** [https://www.desertcart.kg/products/2244159-the-lives-of-others](https://www.desertcart.kg/products/2244159-the-lives-of-others) --- *Product available on Desertcart Kyrgyzstan* *Store origin: KG* *Last updated: 2026-05-01*