For a guten mensch...

 Movie title: The Lives of Others

My ex-roommate Bristy recommended the film to me back in varsity days. And I downloaded it in my laptop’s (now my “old” laptop) Movies -> German Movies folder.

Finally when I watched the film two weeks ago, it was amidst a kind of a lockdown that the film also displays. We faced a lockdown of freedom of connection (from the internet, that halted my work life, made me retrieve the movie from the old laptop), the film showed artists who had to endure a lockdown of freedom of expression. So, good time to watch, he he.

The film is about an artist couple - a writer and an actress and a Stasi police officer. It was some time before the German wall was opened. East Germany was enduring suffocation from inability to express their opinion that goes against the ruling government. Every potential activist had a Stasi assigned to them to spy on their lives. Kind of how it is done in our online lives nowadays. But the Stasi was not a software, another human being having independent opinions, likings and dislikings.

The plot was great. And the characters are unpredictable. Made the movie very watchable.

It was so surprising for me to know how a modern country like Germany imprisoned their civilian lives this way. A reminder that freedom of expression might be violated in the modern world also. But the good thing that surprised me again - how the Germans accepted their wrong-doing at the end. This is something to learn from them!