The Lives of Others

FINALLY got my mum and Dad to watch the wonderful 'The Lives of Others' this afternoon. I've been banging on about it for ages but I seized my moment as my mum had been enjoying the 'world at war' series about the Nazis on UKTV History this week (an oppurtunistic bit of programming in the light of the current situation in the Middle East at the moment...?) and I was really glad they both enjoyed it. The experience of watching this movie was truly one of the best in my life, especially since the director did an hour long Q&A afterwards at the Curzon Soho where I attended what I think was the first London screening. He revealed some fascinating things about his 5 year research process for the film - the Stasi is still a very touchy subject in East Germany which few people discuss willingly. Apparently Ulrich Muhe was a prodigal young actor in the theatre during the Stasi's reign, and after the wall came down he found out that all of the fellow actors in his troupe has been employed a informers to report on him. But when he revealed this information during the release of the film, he was scorned by many East Germans, and a hate camapign of intimidation was waged against him. Donnersmarck said that Muhe had become a virtual recluse as a result, and as we all know, he tragically died not long after (though I would infer that it was related, i think it may in fact have been cancer). Very sad.

Immediately after watching this I headed to my usual port of IMDB, with a specific interest in what Florian might be doing next. Nothing came up on his 'normal' record so I went into IMDB Pro and was quite shocked to find that he's living in LA and working on an English language version of the film, to be produced by the Weinsteins. A bit of Googling produced this article:

http://www.cinematical.com/2007/03/01/weinsteins-to-remake-the-lives-of-others/

I'm all for a fantastic story like his needing to reach more people (so they defend their decision), but is a Hollywood remake of this really what people want? I very much doubt it will improve on the original. The argument says that people don't enjoy the subtitles, well then let's do them a dubbed version? For the record, I hate dubbed films, but I feel that surely the kind of person interested in learning about the secret police in Germany isn't going to be bothered by the fact that the film is executed in German (tallies nicely actually with this article you might want to read). Or maybe I'm missing the point and they are going to change the story and location? Either way, this story makes me sigh.