After the Lives of Others

So the final scene in "The Lives of Others" (a beautiful movie one should never watch alone) takes place around 1993, four years after the Berlin Wall came down and three years after German reunification finished.

It's a picture of an interesting moment in history: the complicated one in which Communism for once and for all became a thing of the past. (With the notable exception of China, which grows less communist with every passing year.) But I think it also marks another moment in history.

1993 was four years before "My Best Friend's Wedding," the movie that planted Julia Roberts in the American consciousness. Roberts was the first big movie star of my time. She was the first person whose intrigues and affairs were noteworthy enough to warrant around-the-clock paparazzi attention.

It was four years before said paparazzi allegedly chased Princess Diana to her death.

It was five years before Google, six years before Blogger, and twelve years before YouTube.

In the final scene of "The Lives of Others," a prominent East German author discovers, while researching his own files in the newly-opened state archives, that a sympathetic Stasi officer monitored his house in the years before the Wall fell. Because of the officer's subtle interventions, no one ever learned of the author's subversive activities.

When he realizes that he owes his life and livelihood to a man he has never seen, the author chases down the former Stasi officer, who is now a mailman. But at the last minute, the author can't bring himself to jump out of the car and ask, "why did you do this for me?" As the audience, we never know it either. Instead, the author dedicates his next book to the officer by his Stasi code name, and the officer sees it, and feels thanked.

To someone who hasn't seen the film, my next point might not make sense. But I also think "The Lives of Others" marks one of the last times when the inevitable conclusion to this story would not have been that Oprah read the book and made it part of her book circle, leading Good Morning America to exile its harem of overworked, unpaid interns to the vast Stasi archive, where one of them uncovered the officer's real identity, which led producers to broadcast a special segment on him, therefore ending his anonymity. The public's appetite for the story meant both the author and the officer got booked as special guests on a marathon episode of 60 Minutes that was later excerpted onto YouTube and in which the two bantered back-and-forth about why they did it, how they did it, and whether anyone currently running in the presidential election would have done it. The officer got a multi-million dollar advance for his tell-all novel "Behind Closed Doors: My Life as a Police Subversive" and gained recognition as a blogger and motivational speaker who raked in speakers' fees only a notch below Bill Clinton's.

In other words: the last moment in which the lives of others could still be secret, mysterious and inexplicable.