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From: film reviews Category: Films Date: 15 April 2007 Time: 06:23 AM Review: http://www.sonyclassics.com/thelivesofothers/ Lot of awards. Reviews say it is a masterpiece. Even heard good things from a film-making acquaintance of the director, whom you would have expected to have been negatively biased by a tinge of jealousy. All positive indicators. I was disappointed of course. It was solid and engaging like a good tv drama. You could imagine it as a miniseries. Stasi rhymes with Nazi, sort of, the gray policeman turns into an audience and director for the richer lives of others, and the surveillance/detention theme has nice resonances for todays post 9/11 culture. Yet the usual sentimentality seeps in, the Stasi main guy turns how to be a good mensch, always the compromise in films that we need someone to believe in. The slightly too vertical actress dies for her sins. The handsome writer survives unscathed to write. The ending should have been sad and abrupt, but no it goes on and we must see East Germany, and the Stasi -guy and the writer, reunited if only in dedication. Happyish hollywood and too much explication, like the scenes in the graveyards or Israel or whatever they always tack on to war/holocuast movies. Leave them wanting more.