History Film / TheLivesOfOthers

* CharacterDevelopment: The movie's first scenes show Wiesler to be a brutal, emotionless interrogator. During his surveillance assignment, Wiesler is shown slowly beginning to care about Dreyman and Christa-Maria and eventually attempts to protect them from the Stasi. This is in many ways the core story of the film and Wiesler is its unlikely hero.

* EstablishingCharacterMoment: The opening scene: Wiesler questions brutally a suspect, and he uses this as an example for his students at the Stasi school (where he secretly marks the name of a student who questions his methods). This establishes Wiesler as a brutal, emotionless and faithful Stasi agent.

* GoodPeopleHaveGoodSex: Wiesler and Christa-Maria have loving sex; it's in contrast when Wiesler attempts to recreate that intimacy with a hooker. It doesn't work.

The film takes place in [[UsefulNotes/TheEighties 1984]] in state-socialist UsefulNotes/EastGermany and tells the story of Captain Gerd Wiesler (Ulrich Mühe), a stoic officer of the SecretPolice, Ministerium für Staatssicherheit (also known as UsefulNotes/TheStasi). His job is to find and interrogate "enemies of socialism", people with Western sympathies or just plain wrong opinions. He is ordered by friend and superior Anton Grubitz (Creator/UlrichTukur) to carry out a spying operation against playwright Georg Dreyman (Creator/SebastianKoch), whom they suspect is not what he seems. Wiesler and his men install numerous microphones in Dreyman's apartment, and his life is filled with sitting in the attic, listening in on Dreyman and his girlfriend, actress Christa-Maria Sieland (Martina Gedeck).

* BilingualBonus: Grubitz's joke about Erich Honecker makes more sense for those who are fluent in German. The joke in English goes "What is the difference between Erich Honecker and a telephone? None! Hang up, try again!" The punchline "''Aufhängen, neu wählen!''" has a double meaning in German: to hang up the phone and dial again, or to hang the man and have a new election.

* NobleDemon: Wiesler. He's a Stasi agent and a ruthless interrogator, but unlike his superiors, he's not corrupted by his power and treats it as a job, done out of genuine conviction in the system in its pure, ideal form. His disgust over abusing personal power is part of what makes him ultimately side with Dreyman.

* TheStoic: Wiesler. He never smiles once in the whole film. The closest he gets is at the very end when he buys Dreyman's book. [[spoiler: "No, it's for me."]]

* NobleDemon: Wiesler. He's a Stasi agent and a ruthless interrogator, but unlike his superiors, he's not corrupt by his power and treats it as a job, done out of genuine conviction in the system in its pure, ideal form. His disgust over abusing personal power is part of what makes him ultimately side with Dreyman.

%%* TheAtoner: Wiesler.

%%** Jerska [[spoiler: and Christa-Maria.]]

** Also the subject of Dreyman's article. Despite keeping records of everything, from how many shoes he buys to how many books he reads, the Statistics Office has not published the suicide rates since 1977, when East Germany was second only to Hungary in its numbers.

* PetTheDog: Wiesler gets in an elevator, and a plastic ball bounces in, followed by the little boy who owns the ball. The boy asks if Wiesler is really a Stasi member, saying "They're bad men who put men in jail, says my dad." To which Wiesler responds, "What's the name of your... [[LastSecondWordSwap ball]]?"

* SocietyMarchesOn: The two renditions of Georg Dreyman's play pre- and post-''glasnost'' couldn't be more different. The original staging is more or less an on-stage soap opera. The 1990's staging is very minimalist and expressionistic with a multiracial cast.

* NotSoDifferent: Wiesler and Dreyman are both initially genuine believers in the socialist system. Over the course of the film, both come to realize over the course of their separate but intertwined storylines that the supposedly tough but fair regime they live in is really a nightmare for anybody who doesn't happen to have wealth or power, and that East Germany's pretensions of total economic and social equality are empty platitudes.

* DefectorFromCommieLand: Dreyman and the other writers use this to test whether his apartment is bugged. Paul has an uncle in West Berlin who frequently visits. They loudly discuss a plan in detail to smuggle him out. The plan is inadvertently foiled by Wiesler who, in an attempt to protect Dreyman, does not report this to the border checkpoint, and when the car receives no extra searches, they assume the apartment is not bugged. Wiesler is later surprised when he realizes that Paul is still there, as he believed it was a genuine escape attempt.

* StagingTheEavesdrop: In order to know if Dreyman's apartment is bugged, he discusses loudly with his friends about a plan to smuggle him out in detail. Wiesler does not report this to the border checkpoint, and when the car receives no extra searches, they assume the apartment is not bugged.

* DefectorFromCommieLand: Dreyman and the other writers use this to test whether his apartment is bugged. Paul has an uncle in West Berlin who frequently visits. They loudly discuss a plan in detail to smuggle him out. Wiesler does not report this to the border checkpoint, and when the car receives no extra searches, they assume the apartment is not bugged. Wiesler is later surprised when he realizes that Paul is still there, as he believed it was a genuine escape attempt.

* ProductPlacement: ''Der Spiegel'', one of Germany's most prominent news magazines, is a major plot point. They even created the cover of the suicide issue used in the film, ensuring it met with their art standards.

* HeelFaceTurn: Wiesler, the remorseless Stasi officer, has a change of heart and helps save a playwright from who knows how much trouble.

* DefectorFromCommieLand: Dreyman and the other writers use this to test whether his apartment is bugged. Paul has an uncle in West Berlin who frequently visits. They loudly discuss a plan to smuggle him out in detail. Wiesler does not report this to the border checkpoint, and when the car receives no extra searches, they assume the apartment is not bugged. Wiesler is later surprised when he realizes that Paul is still there, as he believed it was a genuine attempt.

The film takes place in [[UsefulNotes/TheEighties 1984]] in state-socialist UsefulNotes/EastGermany and tells the story of Captain Gerd Wiesler (Ulrich Mühe), a stoic officer of the SecretPolice, Ministerium für Staatssicherheit (also known as UsefulNotes/TheStasi). His job is to find and interrogate "enemies of socialism", people with Western sympathies or just plain wrong opinions. He is ordered by friend and superior Anton Grubitz (Creator/UlrichTukur) to carry out a spying operation against playwright Georg Dreyman (Sebastian Koch), whom they suspect is not what he seems. Wiesler and his men install numerous microphones in Dreyman's apartment, and his life is filled with sitting in the attic, listening in on Dreyman and his girlfriend, actress Christa-Maria Sieland (Martina Gedeck).

The film takes place in state-socialist UsefulNotes/EastGermany and tells the story of Captain Gerd Wiesler (Ulrich Mühe), a stoic officer of the SecretPolice, Ministerium für Staatssicherheit (also known as UsefulNotes/TheStasi). His job is to find and interrogate "enemies of socialism", people with Western sympathies or just plain wrong opinions. He is ordered by friend and superior Anton Grubitz (Creator/UlrichTukur) to carry out a spying operation against playwright Georg Dreyman (Sebastian Koch), whom they suspect is not what he seems. Wiesler and his men install numerous microphones in Dreyman's apartment, and his life is filled with sitting in the attic, listening in on Dreyman and his girlfriend, actress Christa-Maria Sieland (Martina Gedeck).

* WeHaveWaysOfMakingYouTalk: The movie opens with a lecture on this; one student says that their methods are "inhumane" ([[TooDumbToLive which is quite possibly the most idiotic thing that a person could do, given the setting]]). Later [[spoiler: Wiesler does this on Christa-Maria]].

* ReassignedToAntarctica: [[spoiler:Wiesler is demoted to Department M (steaming open letters in a dark basement) for obstructing the Dreyman operation. The reason he's reassigned rather than fired, imprisoned, or executed is that Grubitz couldn't prove anything--and even if he could, it would implicate Grubitz himself.]]

The film takes place in state-socialist UsefulNotes/EastGermany and tells the story of Captain Gerd Wiesler (Ulrich Mühe), a stoic officer of the SecretPolice, Ministerium für Staatssicherheit (also known as UsefulNotes/TheStasi). His job is to find and interrogate "enemies of socialism", people with Western sympathies or just plain wrong opinions. He is ordered by friend and superior Anton Grubitz to carry out a spying operation against playwright Georg Dreyman, whom they suspect is not what he seems. Wiesler and his men install numerous microphones in Dreyman's apartment, and his life is filled with sitting in the attic, listening in on Dreyman and his girlfriend, actress Christa-Maria Sieland.

''The Lives of Others'' (''Das Leben der Anderen'') is an award-winning German film from 2006. It is the debut film of screenwriter and director Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck.

* DoubleTake: A ambulatory variation, [[spoiler: when Wiesler walks past a bookstore window with copies of ''Sonata for a Good Man'', walking back into frame to look at the display before going in to investigate.]]

** Jerska [[spoiler: and Christa-Maria.]]

* FanDisservice: Both Christa-Maria's rape by the minister (he's fat and unattractive and she clearly feels disgust and humiliation), and the scene in which Wiesler hires a prostitute and tries in vain to make an emotional connection to her as well as a sexual one.