We saw some time ago this very nice movie about post-war life in East Berlin. People there were under constant surveillance of secret police Stasi. And people in this organization are pursuing their own interests. They playing ordinary peoples’ lives have access to scarcely goods. But some people truly believe in their duties to protect pro-soviet government from the subversive influence of the western world. One of this man is the main character of the movie officer Gerd Wiesler
He loves his job and has many skills to reveal spies and shed light on the lies of people. His new task was to find something on a famous playwright Sebastian Koch. So he started eavesdropping on hin and his actress-lover Christa-Maria.
But during his long shifts in the attic, he realized that the main purpose of his task was to clear the way to one of the party leader who was in love with Christa-Maria. Wiesler became more and more sympathetic to the couple and when Sebastian’s friend committed suicide being barred from the theater, Sebastian decided to publish a critic article in a western magazine. And having all the evidence, Wiesler decided to side with Sebastian and told nothing to his supervisor.
As a result, Christa-Maria was put in jail for her adherence to Sebastian. Trying to escape she told about his article and once again Wiesler went ahead and destroyed all the pieces of evidence before Stasi found them. But Christa-Maria didn’t know about it and feeling regret thrown herself under the bus.
The end of the film is also wonderful, after the fall of the Berlin wall, Sebastian went to the archive to find about his case and realized that he was shielded by one of the officers who had punished as a result of it. Then, Sebastian wrote a book with his acknowledgment of Wiesler. In the end, Wiesler is staying in a bookstore purchasing a copy of that book.
The film has an unexpectedly topical plot for modern Russia. As GDR in the late nineties, there are a lot of people now who are trying to keep the current government in power by any means. However, even so, the efficient organization as Stasi was not able to deal with free movement. As long as Putin has money to buy his votes and to pay to policemen he has power. But sooner or later oil price dropped and that would be the end of the regime with all of their big data, FSB and pro-kremlin organization. Peoples are not fools. They just are not willing to risk their freedom and health as long as they have peace, a job, and some freedom.