Florian Von Donnersmarck's The Lives Of Others

She walks into an old beautiful building. As she enters the building, she notices how the ceiling seems to be never ending. As she slowly looks down, she notices the multiple floors and many shelves. She begins to wander closer to the shelves and realizes they are not empty but full of books. She runs her fingers over every book until she finds one that catches her eye. She slowly pulled the book off the shelf and studied it. The cover the book said “Biology”. Uninterested, she quickly puts the book back on the shelf and continues to skim through the shelves. She judged the book before she truly understood what it was about, like Gerd Wiesler did to Georg Dreyman in Florian von Donnersmarck’s The Lives of Other. Donnersmarch contrasts the beginning and the end of The Lives of Others in order to show us the change in Weisler’s character from blind law enforcer to a man able to think for himself, and a man open to the emotions of others. While some may argue that Gerd Wiesler was the antagonist in the

This role brings with it the freedom to express his own feelings and actions as opposed to reflecting the feelings and actions of the East German government. This can be seen very clearly towards the end of the film. Wiesler’s buying a copy of “A Sonata for a Good Man” is symbolic of this. He tells the bookseller “this is for me”. This purchase and the words that accompany it show us the first time that Wiesler does something for himself during the film. First he acts on behalf of the government. He then acts on his conscience, keeping Dreyman safe from arrest. Though this shows him breaking free of the government’s ideals, his behaviour does not benefit him in any way – in fact, it puts him in danger. It is only right at the end of the film that Wiesler finally thinks of himself. This shows his gradual transition from government puppet to someone completely in control o his own