The Lives of Others

The grass, we are told, is always greener somewhere else; a less philosophical slant to that old adage summed up most concisely by this French poet in the phrase la vie est ailleurs. Yes, in a way, life is always elsewhere. When we choose to live in one city, love one woman, read one book, befriend one colleague, we necessarily forsake all other cities, women, books, and colleagues, at least for some period of time. There are many among us who do not have broad selections in these categories; many more privileged persons can only lament their destinies and look upon the choices of others with the greenest of eyes (the coincidence of color is striking). The higher we get on the totem pole of privilege and ease, the more likely we are to second-guess what we have made of our allotments – such is the luxury of having too much time and too many competing brands and alternatives. Not so in most countries of the world. Despite our amazing industrial advances in the last hundred years, most countries are still limited in what they can offer their citizens, both commercially and socially. Most people still marry partners from the same region in which they were born; most people, in fact, do not spend appreciable amounts of time far from that selfsame region. This rule of thumb used to apply to Europe, albeit less so, before the advent of the European Community, which has been slackening controls on labor mobility little by little. Now a forty-year-old computer programmer from Kaunas can pack up his things and move to Paris with nary a thought about visas, permits, and other obstacles of immigration – and for that reason alone, he will be less likely to immigrate. Less likely because regardless of his degree of Gallicization, he will ultimately miss home, the home that he was not really allowed to leave for at least half of his life, and those memories, however austere, will propel him back to the cultural milieu in which he feels most comfortable. But what if the culture of both countries were once identical? What if there were two realities, the open, liberal, creative culture you had always known, and another reality – directed, Spartan, ruthless – a mockery of the first culture aimed at some untenable goal in some unthinkable future? Such is the conundrum of the protagonist of this glorious film.

The original German title would translate as The Life of Others, suggesting a Boschian gaze on the entirety of alternatives to your own existence. But in the plural, we get the sense of tangible life, of individual fate and collective oppression. Our hero, if we can call him that, is Gerd Wiesler (the late Ulrich Mühe), a career Stasi officer who is so regimented as to be unable to enjoy any of life's details except the precision of his routine. Were Wiesler's face a true reflection of his soul, we would be worried that his body might contain nothing more than rotting bones and flesh. His assignment as one of East Germany's most devoted agents is to sit patiently and collect incriminating information on anyone who could possibly betray the socialist cause. I suppose the bulk of intelligence legwork involves trials of patience; but when you factor in stereotypical German thoroughness and diligence you have quite a project. Wiesler's current quarry is playwright Georg Dreyman (Sebastian Koch), who embodies that most feared enemy of totalitarian regimes, the artistic intellectual. Dreyman's résumé includes a series of successful publications and a coveted actress, Christa-Maria Sieland (Martina Gedeck), as his girlfriend. Still, something is missing in Georg's life. His creative potential has not been fully achieved, although these thoughts plague any artist of merit from adolescence to the grave, and Dreyman is said to have started looking to the emerald fields of his Western confederates for inspiration. West Germany's economic renaissance was one of the more extraordinary turnarounds in modern history and the details of its resurgence, despite efforts to gag the actual figures, were well-known to citizens of East Germany. In lieu of speaking out against the regime, which would spell an end to his burgeoning career, Dreyman tries to enjoy his status as a semi-celebrity with witticisms and hints at the power and value of artistic expression regardless of the politics of one's country. Dreyman is an East German citizen, but his lineage is to German artists of all times.

These ingredients sound like a plausible defection case to Wiesler, who has little appreciation for the arts since they tend to entail rather impractical matters. He will watch some television now and then, in between sessions with paid escorts, but his mind is focused on the Darwinian struggle to survive and protect – and in this respect, he is the fittest sort of predator. Dreyman's apartment is quickly tapped and Wiesler settles into his listening post at clockwork shifts with the facility of someone for whom spying comprises more muscle memory than thought. Wiesler reports to his superior (Ulrich Tukur) that he has yet to find any evidence incriminating Dreyman, but then again the Stasi could probably drum up something untoward against even an automaton like Wiesler. And here is where we suspect a twist will occur, and it most certainly does. Wiesler discovers a piece of information to which the audience has already been privy: that a filthy hog of a government official by the name of Hempf  (Thomas Thieme) wants Christa-Maria all to his greasy self. Consequently, Dreyman must be found guilty of harboring pro-Western sympathies. Most drones in a police state of this caliber and unscrupulousness would emit a chuckle and carry out the order thinking lasciviously of their own past and future conquests. But not our Wiesler. Wiesler is, you see, the ideal Stasi member, completely incapable of contravening socialist concepts of equality and fair play even in favor of some bloated cadre's lusty whims. Since tales like these either have characters who never change and slowly become symbols for whatever ideals they cherish, or feature an unexpected change in a person captive to antiquated missions, we sense that Wiesler will do something dramatic. Could Wiesler even regain the soul he forsook years ago when he bought into the artificial brotherhood of man based on its least impressive commonality, money? What could he, a mid-range officer with little pull apart from local operations hope to achieve against Hempf, the epitome of all totalitarian regimes at all times, a man gorged on money, power, and, from the looks of it, an ungodly amount of Bratwurst?

What Wiesler does and, specifically, what he doesn't do, will not be revealed here. The viewer who craves a happy ending may take solace in the fact that the two Germanies reunified into the Mecca of culture and artistic genius for which they were once exclusively known. This same viewer may be informed in his readings about the film that there never was a Wiesler, or a Dreyman, or an actress as enchanting as Christa-Maria Sieland, and that these bare facts reduce the validity of such an enterprise, reserving it for pure fiction, which as we all know has little to do with reality. But in essence, Wiesler, Dreyman, and Sieland all existed in exactly the form you see on the screen; their thoughts, concerns and hopes were all the same; only their actions and fates may not have been accurately portrayed. Maybe one day a file will surface from the bottomless trench that was East Germany's database in which all three of these characters will be clearly alive, Wiesler perhaps under his code name HGW – Hauptmann (Captain) Gerd Wiesler – XX/ 7; maybe Dreyman will indeed have a copy of a Sonata of a Good Man; perhaps Sieland will be allowed to be with whom she wants and not have to cheat death by cheating on her beloved. Until then, you can enjoy one of the most spectacular films in recent memory.                         

Musset, "Se voir le plus possible ..."

A work ("To share all possible time, and to love") by this French poet.  You can read the original here.

To share all possible time, and to love 
Bereft of guile, of shame, of lies, of scorn, 
Without desire's heat or remorseful thorn,           
Two hearts e'er twinned, two souls in peace above.

Respect the past however far its wings, 
Our love a daytime haze, not just a dream;  
Within this clarity shall we breathe free,    
As Laura sighs and her sad lover sings.

And you, whose every step reveals His grace,
And you, in flowered crown without a care, 
'Twas you who said we had to love like this.

And I, old child by holy doubt so faced,  
Who hears and thinks and then to answer dares:
We may live otherwise yet love in bliss. 

A Separation

"What you are telling me," says a judge who remains off-camera in the opening scene of this film, "is not a good reason for divorce." That very principle distinguishes more conservative countries from the West's revolving-door marriage policy, a situation on which I will comment no further. Our invisible arbiter generously floats three scenarios in which the plaintiff, Simin Lavasani (Leila Hatami), might have good cause to rid herself of her husband, Nader Lavasani (Peyman Maadi): he is an addict; he beats you; or he does not give you an allowance. Students of human nature will know this triptych as the three failings of man: the suppression of his desires and emotions; allowing thorough conquest to his desires and emotions; and the forsaking of spiritual salvation for the idolatry of his piggy bank. The modern mind also knows them as the indefinite roulette of drugs, violence, and greed in the news, tales we have all heard a thousand times but which, for those involved, do not diminish in their tragedy. 

Nader is, however, none of the above. On the contrary, even Simin assures the judge that her husband is "a nice, decent man." What she fails to mention is that he is a nice, decent man who ministers to his Alzheimer's-stricken father by himself. The old fellow has a sweet, soft, blank look.  We do not know whether his life was marked by sin or goodness; we know nothing about him except that he is Nader's father. Not once do we hear of siblings who could help in his efforts; in fact, no one even suggests it, meaning either there are none or the matter has been so often discussed that it never needs to be brought up again. This renders Simin's request all the more cruel: after "eighteen months of running around and expenses," the couple and their daughter, 11-year-old Termeh (Sarina Farhadi, the director's own daughter), have received visas to go and live abroad. This was six months ago and there remain only forty days before the visas expire. Importantly, the destination is never specified, because that would generate an unneeded political angle to a film that will focus its attention on two concepts of truth – the concept embedded in written law, and the concept particular to each individual. A casual observer may think that Simin's desire to leave Iran is justified given what we may have heard of its political climate. Yet by refraining from truly criticizing a political or religious code, A Separation is very consciously hermetic, urging us to judge the actions and words of the characters only within their limited sphere. If that is the case, then Simin is wrong: the couple can always reapply for visas in the future once Nader's father has succumbed to darkness, or they can simply send their daughter abroad. If her husband is willing to forego this opportunity, Simin claims, then he "obviously does not care about his daughter's future." "So you think the children living in this country don't have a future?" replies the still-unseen judge, a response that dampens her aggressiveness. When Simin meekly explains that she would rather her daughter "not grow up in these circumstances," the judge quickly answers:"What circumstances? Is she better off with two parents here or with no father over there?" To this the couple falls predictably silent. No one would ever claim that a separation of two good people who "have lived together for fourteen years" could possibly be beneficial for their child.

Two good people? Yes, actions throughout the film indicate that both Simin and Nader are morally responsible citizens, relatively well-off, well-educated, and open-minded. While they have numerous advantages in life, they are neither snobs nor vulgarians. And while others might eschew hiring an underprivileged woman (Sareh Bayat) to look after Nader's father, they have only the usual qualms of entrusting a house key to a stranger. We give away nothing by adding that as the woman, Razieh, begins to come to the house, Simin moves to her mother's place in symbolic defiance. Termeh, who will ultimately judge her parents in the film's final scene, remains with Nader because she knows, as one character observes much later on, that her mother would never go anywhere without her. This unambiguous truth pains Nader, who now questions his daughter's allegiance and consecrates far too much precious time trying to secure it, which brings us to another point. A Separation is a strange and unique film because it repeatedly and gleefully denies our expectations. Instead of showing us, as the title suggests, the difficulties a troubled couple might endure, it provides a metaphor for their split and their differing priorities. Razieh, now a substitute for the departed Simin, comes to help Nader but does not want to stay: the commute is too long; the pay is measly, even in her dire financial straits; she has to bring along her four-year-old daughter Somayeh, but with all the caregiving and housework has almost no time for her; she is repulsed by the need to change Nader's father like one would a baby (her aversion is later consistently attributed to religious propriety); and her volatile, unemployed husband Hodjat (a marvelous Shahab Hosseini) neither knows nor would approve of her new job. After a couple of tiring days, including one in which Nader's father escapes to buy a newspaper, Razieh is fired by Nader for having left the apartment and tied his father to the radiator. Nader also accuses her of theft, triggering a chain of events that must be left to the curious viewer to discover.

There is something else about Razieh that we will come to learn, and in a key scene in the film, we hear a personal conversation that is unmistakable in its subject matter, but the camera's placement does not allow us to confirm precisely which characters are also privy to it. Razieh is a woman of faith who nevertheless time and again will act in blatant contradiction to what we understand to be her religious principles. Why would she do such a thing? The answer may be found in her husband, whose uncouth and deranged behavior so contrasts with Nader's as to make the two husbands obvious foils. Hodjat was once a cobbler who was released without compensation and told "to seek justice if he pleases." Justice failed him, and now he cannot support his family, a multi-pronged curse in a conservative country. As a result, Hodjat believes in God, but no longer believes in man's ability to do God's will. This makes him desperate, crazed, depressed, and violent. He is capable of anything, and everyone around him knows it.  Again, those who tend to think of man as predominantly a political animal will understand Hodjat's and Razieh's roles in very distinct symbols. To wit, the conservative culture evident may strike the outsider as odd since it succeeds in making women look uniform, unrecognizable from the back (even more so with schoolgirls), injecting otherwise untenable suspense into a couple of scenes when Nader is looking for his daughter. Farhadi seems to have considered this inevitability and gently steers us away from it by reinforcing why Hodjat has some good left in him, namely his honor and dignity, the last things that can be stripped from the poor, even if the cobbler repeatedly expresses himself in a regrettable fashion. There is also a revelation towards the end of the film that is not so much exciting as devastatingly truthful, and part of that revelation is the admission that we are not stronger than the law. The law, however well intended it may seem, only factors in certain details because otherwise it would become a holistic judgement of one's life, of one's sins and crimes over the course of thoughts and actions and years. It is then hardly a coincidence that all five main characters will end up doing something they believe complies with the spirit, not the letter, of the law, and each action has its own particular consequences. Perhaps that is why the term "legally separated" sounds more like a condemnation than a reprieve.

The Ash-tree

Once upon a time, a time not so very long ago, a plague of doubt spread across a large portion of Europe as well as the New World. The subject of the plague was of the greatest concern: the state of the human soul.  But the operations conducted against that plague have become eternal examples of fear-mongering and paranoia. We speak, of course, of the second half of the seventeenth century, when a number of purported evildoers were scorched or asked to pass impossible tests that damned their body one way or their soul another. What do we mean by doing evil? Perhaps very generally not doing good or, as was likely the situation at many trials, relying on pagan rituals to enhance terrestrial life. Reviewing the seventeenth century's misadventures has made many modern minds scoff at the notion of true witches; admittedly, some of the evidence looks so contrived as to resemble the trim and tidy criminal proceedings found to this day within totalitarian borders. Yet some not as much. Countenancing the havoc wreaked by Church and State may seem appalling to the person who cannot believe in abstract entities unless they are identified by a numerical formula, that is, by the counting drums of man; but to avouch there was absolutely nothing afoot is to ignore the fact that there is always something afoot, something wicked and unwholesome and very real. The believer knows we live not only in a world of fossils, but amidst shadows, some of darker tint than others. And what do these shades contain? All the vilest hues of human imagination, which could explain the events in this exquisite tale.

Our time is 1690, and our first and most unfortunate protagonist is a certain Sir Matthew Fell, deputy sheriff in Suffolk and resident of this site's fine, Italian-porticoed country-house, Castringham Hall. We are informed that in this same dreadful year a number of impossible tests were inflicted upon some of the district's inhabitants. Tests, mind you, that were meant to terminate anyone's curiosity as to the inhabitants' intentions as well as the inhabitants themselves:

Whether the persons accused of this offence really did imagine that they were possessed of unusual powers of any kind; or whether they had the will at least, if not the power, of doing mischief to their neighbours; or whether all the confessions, of which there are so many, were extorted by the mere cruelty of the witch-finders, these are questions which are not, I fancy, yet solved.  

Sir Matthew contributes to this onslaught by fingering a denizen who "clad only in her shift" had sauntered up an ash tree near Sir Matthew's bedroom window and was proceeding to truncate small twigs "with a peculiarly curved knife," and, what is more, talking to herself as she did so. This strange woman was known only as Mrs. Mothersole and "mainly on this evidence" was united in infamy with a host of other strange women whose behavior did not meet with approval by her co-villagers. If this description sounds a wee cavalier, consider how little it took at that time to engender suspicion; also consider that any genuine worshipper of baleful forces would likely be at pains to exclude herself from incendiary gossip and act as normal as possible. This little conundrum woefully unaddressed, Mrs. Mothersole was hauled off to the gallows; but unlike "the other victims [who] were apathetic or broken down with misery," our alleged hag had nothing of fear or apprehension in her. Instead, according to one contemporary account, "she presented the living aspect of a mad devil," and was heard to say "the seemingly meaningless words, 'there will be guests at the Hall.'" After the suspects were dispatched, as we would like to believe, to the hell they so adored, Sir Matthew returned to his house and its guardian ash tree only to espy, from a distance, something "run[ning] up and down the stem of the ash." The next morning, Sir Matthew Fell having exceeded his customary waking time by over two hours, his servants entered his locked room and "found their master dead and black." Of course, more bad things occur (so many livestock are affected by random attacks as to oblige farmers to speak of "The Castringham sickness"), albeit sparing one generation, that of Sir Matthew's son, also Sir Matthew, who had the sterling idea of sporting his father's room forever. It is then the latter's grandson, Sir Richard, a "pestilent innovator," who shall rediscover the ash tree that most everyone agrees needs no rediscovery.  

If you have some knowledge of this tongue you may know that the word for ash tree is derived from the word for "spear"; you would also know, if you are familiar with Norse mythology (as James most certainly was), that the first man was sprung from such a plant. James's works are the composite of Germanic philology, Gothic atmosphere, and a love for old Britain and its devilish ways, all filtered through one of the most fastidious and delightful styles in the English language. Even in its foray into seventeenth-century usage (the contemporary eyewitness account of Mrs. Mothersole's fate, composed by a Vicar Crome, resorts in the end to the Scriptures and bibliomancy) has its charm and authenticity, and experienced readers of James know that the professor could hardly ever resist the inclusion of this or that dialect because the simple voice is often the truest. Sir Richard, alas, cannot be counted among the simple. And so it follows that his grand designs intrude upon the awkward truce established, not quite willingly, by his ancestor:

It was in his time that the great family pew was built out on the north side of the parish church. So large were the Squire's ideas that several of the graves on that unhallowed side of the building had to be disturbed to satisfy his requirements. Among them was that of Mrs. Mothersole, the position of which was accurately known, thanks to a note on a plan of the church and yard, both made by Mr. Crome. A certain amount of interest was excited in the village when it was known that the famous witch, who was still remembered by a few, was to be exhumed. And the feeling of surprise, and indeed disquiet, was very strong when it was found that, though her coffin was fairly sound and unbroken, there was no trace whatever inside it of body, bones, or dust. Indeed, it is a curious phenomenon, for at the time of her burying no such things were dreamt of as resurrection-men, and it is difficult to conceive any rational motive for stealing a body otherwise than for the uses of the dissecting-room. 

The incident revived for a time all the stories of witch-trials and of the exploits of the witches, dormant for forty years, and Sir Richard's orders that the coffin should be burnt were thought by a good many to be rather foolhardy, though they were duly carried out.

Mr. Crome would be naturally the same vicar who charted the wiles of Mrs. Mothersole and concluded that, as it were, some things are better kept unknown to man and his sensitive thoughts. Is this why the three auspices he drew spoke of a tree, a place that should never again be inhabited, and an animal whose young ones do certain things just like their mother? Certain things, that is, only a particular type of mother would ever want her children to do.

Akhmatova, "Художнику"

A work ("To the artist") by this Russian poet.  You can read the original here.

Your work seems but a whim sometimes, 
Those labors blessed as they may be: 
Unceasing gild of autumn limes, 
Unending blue of newest sea. 

To think now that this slumber's glaze,  
Leads me anon into your grove, 
Where I, afraid of every maze,  
A-swoon seek traces of your trove. 

Beneath your arch should I then slip,
Swept by your hand into a sky,
To cool my hateful heat adrift?

And there I'll meet eternal bliss,
And there, with scorching lids closed tight,
Anew I'll find a tearful gift.