The Lives of Others

Having succumbed to the temptations of Facebook it's been a while since I wrote anything here, partly because all 5 or so of my blog readers have also abandoned blogging for Facebook, and partly because I've been too busy accumulating "friends" to take the time to do anything more constructive.

I now have almost 50 friends and have joined such bastions of deep discussion as the David Tennant Appreciation Society, though I avoided joining a group called "You know you've been a student too long when..." which included the inexplicably popular topic "Where's the most embarrassing place you've been sick?" to which 7 pages worth of respondents had enthusiastically listed taxis, lecture theatres, shops, partners' beds, 11th-floor windows etc.

But there is life outside Facebook, and this week it's called "The Lives of Others" (or "Das Leben der Anderen", if you want to look clever). I saw this film at The Renoir in Bloomsbury, because for an exrta £1 you get a much more comfortable seat than at the Camden Odeon and your feet don't stick to the carpet (partly because they don't sell anything at the Renoir that you can spill on the carpet to make it sticky in the first place) and on top of this you get a warm, fuzzy glow that you're actually doing something intellectual, which the Camden Odeon distinctly lacks.

The Lives of Others is a German film so I felt happily posey dragging the reluctant F along to read the subtitles. It's also a brilliant film. It focuses on a playwright in the German Democratic Republic (irony of this name noted) in the 1980s, and the Stasi officer tasked with monitoring him. The settings are suitably bleak without seeming to form the backdrop for a lecture entitled "Why Communism Doesn't Work" (which is often the case), and the characters are interesting in that, with the exception of one of the government minister, none is especially horrible, but none is a saint, either, and many are capable of fatal mistakes. I can't say very much else as it would spoil it for you, but do look out for the anachronism at the end, where a book is purchased in Euros in 1993...