Lives of Others, Lies of Others

I had already seen that movie, but i saw it again on Saturday night. Das Leben der Anderen, the lives of others. What is all about? Well, spying on people, discovering their big and little lies and flaws, and using them on our own behalf.




Apparently, Georg is an immaculate theater writer, and Christa, his muse. But Huptmann Gerd Wiesler is suspicious of him, too a perfect existence. Nevertheless, Gerd is also too naive and fanatic to get to see that by telling such a suspicion to his boss, clever and eager for power Oberstleutnant Anton Grubitz, he puts in movement a huge Ferris wheel of deceives, lies, and betrayals. The Culture Minister gets to know it, seeing the opportunity to get rid of Georg and, this way, getting pretty Christa just for him, as it has always been his desire.

As cynically stated in the movie, actions of men and women are easy predicted and can be categorized according to several character features and traits. This way, they can be manipulated at will and driven them through the ways we desire. The only condition, as Stasi knew, is to discover our flaws, and used them accordingly.

Christa's flaw was her love to her art, that is, her self-center existence, devoted to her own desires and wishes, to the point of becoming a double prostitute and a traitor. Georg's flaw is his love to his own truth and hedonism, a product of his naivety and cowardice, which also prostituted his art and friendship relations up to witness the suicide of his beloved friend Jerskas. On the other side of this classic triangle, the hidden side, the one that listens and manipulates the reality, making them behave as in a stage, there is Gerd, also a flawed piece of work.

His life is as empty and opaque as the ugly furniture in his empty apartment or the gray clothes he wears. He distrusts intellectuals, specially, happy ones, and stages a full-scale trap to catch that prey, for his own entertainment. But, at some point, he strangely discovers he hates his superiors, Anton and the Minister, even more than happy people, since they have also betrayed him, his ideals and, as a result, his own whole life. As a consequence, he desires to revenge and that's why he machinates, as if he was now a theater director, a new truth, in the same way his colleagues at Stasi routinely do. What's the truth, after all, just what others believe of us, and this can easily be changed.

Gerd decides to save Georg. Why? To save himself. And Georg does redeem him in his book. That is what people usually do, lying, betraying, deceiving, just to try to save themselves. However, what is most astonishing to me is that despite any life can be manipulated with lies, the most powerful way to do this is by telling the naked truth to the right people. Georg told it in his article to Western Europe; Christa, to the Stasi, and Gerd, by hidding it, to his boss.

It seems that truths and lies exercise similar results on humans, like if they were not that far apart from each other.

Ich plauderte und plauderte, – und das war schlecht!

I was mumbling this old song all my way up to work this morning,

Seit ich gekostet diesen Wein –
Seit ich das schöne Weibchen sah –
So brennts im Herzenskämmerlein,
So zwickt es hier, so zwickt es da.
Papagena! Herzenstäubchen!
Papagena! liebes Weibchen!

I'm definitely a weird guy, I sing in German Mozart's Operas. Well, only Papageno's parts in Die Zauber Flüte, the drunk and lazy bird hunter who is in desperate love with Papagena, the cutest bird. He wants to hang himself since he can't find her, and counts down,

Eins!
Zwei!
Zwei ist schon vorbei!
Drei!
Nun wohlan, es bleibt dabei,
Weil mich nichts zurücke hält!
Gute Nacht, du falsche Welt!
(Good night, you, false world!)

But the three cherubs stop him to do it by saying,

Man lebt nur einmal, dies sei dir genug.
(A man lives only once, and this is enough for him)

and tell him to use his Glockenspiel, and Papagena appears in the most lovely and funny duet ever,



However, not even singing opera in German can be compared in difficulty to understand a Papagena.