The Conical Glass: Summer of Subtitles, Part 2

Tuesday, May 29, 2007

Summer of Subtitles, Part 2

I had put off seeing "The Lives of Others," the Academy Award-winning Best Foreign Film from Germany, for several weeks because it sounded really depressing. Memorial Day is a somber holiday, however, so I figured it was as good a time as any. The film really is brilliant, so I'm glad I went.

"Lives" takes place in East Germany in the mid-80s, when the Berlin Wall is still up and the Stasi (secret police) has absolute power to monitor the citizenry. The film's lead characters are two men: Georg Dreyman, a successful playwright who seems to be a model (non-subversive) artist, and Capt. Gerd Wiesler, the Stasi officer assigned to spy on him after a powerful government official becomes infatuated with Dreyman's live-in actress girlfriend. Wiesler happens to be listening in when Dreyman is finally spurred into taking a stand against the East German government -- Dreyman's good friend and mentor, director Albert Jerska, kills himself after having been blacklisted for years, unable to practice his profession. What happens next changes the lives of both Dreyman and Wiesler forever.

I was surprised to note that "Lives" is the first film ever directed by Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, because it is such a mature and assured work. (von Donnersmarck, who was just a teenager when the Wall came down, also wrote the screenplay.) The grim subject matter does make it difficult to watch at times, as when one Stasi bigwig gleefully notes that he's found the perfect way to deal with artists who are thought to be dissidents -- put 'em in solitary for 10 months, and when they finally come out, odds are they'll be so traumatized, they'll never create anything again -- problem solved. Even grimmer is the real-life fact that an astonishing one out of 50 East German citizens was a Stasi informant, spying and reporting on neighbors, friends, even family members. This isn't ancient history -- it happened less than 20 years ago. Don't say it could never happen here, in our post-9/11, security-conscious world. I firmly believe that it could.

We didn't only see movies with subtitles this weekend -- we also checked out Josh Kornbluth's new monologue, "Citizen Josh," at the Magic Theater in SF. I've written about Josh in my blog loads of times because I'm a huge fan and consider him one of our local treasures. In at least one of his previous monologues, Josh mentioned that he never finished the senior thesis that was a requirement for his graduation from Princeton University. "Citizen Josh" is his senior thesis -- yep, he's finally getting that sheepskin! OK, so he's in his 40s, but it's never too late, right?

Josh decided that the topic of his thesis would be "democracy" -- not too broad, right? Of course, all of Josh's monologues are about Josh, and he pulls it off because he's so funny and profound. We learn about his efforts to spruce up a neighborhood playground in his hometown of Berkeley (some neighbors are against it because they don't want to hear kids going "Whee!" -- that seems a little nasty, but living near a swimming pool that's frequently populated by "Whee"-ing kids, I sort of understand). He tells us an affecting story about his younger brother, who was born very prematurely and barely survived. And, of course, he talks about his late dad, a colossal presence in all his monologues. He may not quite tie all the discrete stories together quite as nicely as he did in "Ben Franklin: Unplugged" (my fave Josh monologue) or "Love and Taxes," but it's still darned entertaining, worth a solid A-minus or B-plus.

posted by 125records @ 3:40 PM

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