Currently browsing the "German" category.
The White Ribbon
Posted by Arty Chick on July 9, 2010
The White Ribbon won the Palme d’Or at Cannes and the 2010 Golden Globe for best foreign film and seemed to have a lock on winning the Academy Award as well, but was surprisingly bested by The Secret in their Eyes. And now, having seen both, I understand why. The Golden Globes are voted on by a small group of foreign journalists, while the Academy Awards are decided by mostly American viewers. The sensibilities could not be more different.
The Lives of Others (Das Leben der Anderen)
Posted by Arty Chick on March 20, 2010
This first feature won Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck the Oscar in 2007 for Best Foreign Film and I can see why. What a wonderful film! It takes place in East Germany in 1980s and concerns a successful playwright (Sebastian Koch) and his gorgeous actress girlfriend (Martina Gedeck) who are put under surveillance by Stasi, the secret police, in order to find something to use against the writer because a high ranking minister has a thing for the actress and wants him out of the way. Their apartment is bugged and an agent is set up in the attic listening to their every conversation, taking notes, making reports. Friends come and go and anything they say may be used against them without any court of law. But it is mostly just regular old boring conversation. Then a dear friend, a talented but blacklisted director, kills himself and the writer feels compelled to say something. So he decides to write a piece for Der Spiegel in West Germany, thereby putting himself directly in the police state’s sights if they find out who wrote the piece. The article is about how the East Germans decided to stop keeping statistics on suicides.
