Then they expect you to pick a career

Just saw Leben der Anderen, Das aka The Lives Of Others yesterday. Winner of this year's Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film, it's a subtly moving story set in East Germany during the mid to late '80s, just before the fall of the Berlin Wall.

The film depicts the horrors of living in a totalitarian state, where the Stasi, secret police of the GDP spies relentlessly on its citizens.

For reasons that are not so clear initially, writer Georg Dreyman and his actress girlfriend Christa Sieland come under the watchful eye of Captain Wiesler and his team. We see how meticulous, efficient and clinical but frighteningly robotic the work of the Stasi is, as they spied on their subjects, recording every little detail of their lives.

Dreyman and Christa are both tortured artists, in similar yet different ways, blackmailed by the bureaucratic system but desperately longing for a change.

Wiesler though, is my favourite character. He starts off as a merciless interrogator training the next batch of Stasi agents. But underneath his stone-cold exterior, we see the emptiness of his life outside his work. He goes home alone, eats an instant dinner in front of the TV and occasionally engages the service of a prostitute.

Spying on Dreyman and Christa sparks off something in him, as he gets drawn further into their lives filled with passion and ideals, things that are lacking in his own.

Although it's a little more than 2 hours long, and most of the setting looks drab and dull, clearly representing the oppressiveness of that period, there's not a boring moment in the film. Dry humour is used scarcely but effectively.

This movie also touches on the notion of what it means to be a good person without seeming like a cliché. And the ending is just brilliant. Could be the best film i've watched by far in the cinemas this year.