I watched a good movie last week that was stunning because it’s a new film that really shows the crushing oppression of communism. I kept thinking that it couldn’t possibly have been made in Hollywood these days. It’s called “Other People’s Lives,” and it’s in German with English subtitles. It’s about a rigid East German secret police operative in the early ‘80s who has to spy on a playwright and his girlfriend, gradually comes to realize what a horrible system he’s defending, and secretly tries to protect them from the corrupt communist tyrants at his own peril. I watched the making-of featurette, and the filmmakers went to extraordinary lengths to make everything in it absolutely authentic, right down to the crappy East German apartment furniture.
It was called the ‘The Lives of Others’. Hollywood liked it enough to give it a Foriegn Film Oscar. The actor who played the operative recently passed away from stomach cancer btw.