Categories: uncategorized
Date: 30 April 2007 17:57:12
... last night we went to see The Lives of others the Oscar award wining German film just out in the UK. I have been really looking forward to seeing this film, and for once I was not disappointed! This is quite simply the best film of the year so far, the characters are brilliant, the plot interesting at every point, the pacing is good - despite being well over 2 hours long.
The film is all about the monitoring of potential dissidents within the pre-unified East Germany, and centres on a writer and his girlfriend. The man in charge of monitoring them seems cold and emotionless, but as the film goes on his character develops into something much more, and in fact he gets to deliver the supurb last line of the film that makes you laugh and cry at the same time.
Made me think a lot about surveillance of governments, and today in a obituary of the cellist Rostropovich I read this “In 1970 he had written an open letter to leading Soviet newspapers and magazines in support of his friend the writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn, protesting against the newest restrictions on cultural freedom. The letter remained unpublished, but he was earmarked for attention. The situation worsened when it was discovered that Solzhenitsyn was living at Rostropovich's dacha on the Baltic coast. Finally, at their own request, Rostropovich, his wife and family left the Soviet Union, but were stripped of their Russian citizenship” which is an echo of the situation in the film, and bringing it right into the news of the day on BBC Radio 4 news later I heard this “MI5 secretly monitored two of the London 7 July bombers four times before the 2005 attacks, it emerged during the fertiliser bomb plot trial... While the details of what was said remained unknown, MI5 officers followed Khan and Tanweer to their home addresses in Leeds and Dewsbury... Three weeks later, officers recorded Khan in Khyam's bugged car, discussing imminent plans to travel to Pakistan.“
Scary stuff, but I guess it has happened as long as we have had the technology, and will happen as long as governments have an enemy, or perceived enemy to crack down on.