I just wanted to note a couple of parallels that I found intriguing in the movie Das Leben der Anderen that I watched Saturday night. I especially love this movie because it gives me the opportunity to think about the cross-sections between so much of what I enjoy thinking/writing about: arts in our lives, histories and their (re)writings, the gray spaces of moral and ethical dilemmas, the private vs. public domains, the temptation of power and ideology, etc.
* Georg Dreyman is a playwright, and author of various pieces of writing depicting life in the GDR. He writes their lives into articles that are then published for others to read. He creates plays that others then act out in order for people to understand some critical, internal aspect of human culture.
* Wiesler is a Stasi spy who listens in on the lives of Dreyman and Sieland, and then writes meticulous reports about those lives. Eventually, in the effort of saving them, he begins re-writing the accounts in his reports, changing bits and pieces of their actual goings-on in order to protect them from the secret police. In a way, on paper, he is creating a different kind of history, a sort of play that is different than the one he is currently witnessing.
* Grubitz tells Wiesler that he must reconsider where his allegiances lie, pressuring Wiesler into choosing a side.
* Dreyman aks Sieland a question that forces her to make a decision about which love means the most to her. She is conflicted by her love for her art, her life, her profession, and by her love for him.
* Wiesler writes fictional accounts of Dreyman's life, creating a different kind of man named Dreyman, which blurs the boundaries between the real vs. the unreal Georg Dreyman.
* Dreyman eventually writes a novel titled "Sonata for a Good Man," and dedicates it to Wiesler; however, Dreyman never really names him at all, just uses the code name. Again, the blurring of lines between the true vs. the untrue Wiesler.
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