The Lives of Others

Films put together with this level of intelligence and subtlety are truly a rareity.

Like its erstwhile rival for the Best Foreign Film Oscar, Pan's Labyrinth, Das Leben der Anderen seeks to remind us unequivocably of the horrors of totalitarianism.

"It's dark," said George, yet it isn't really as black as some of the moments within del Toro's fantasy. Hauptmann Wiesler represents a system of oppression that eschews physical torture and the impulsive pistol shot to the head in favour of driving its victims to despair and 'self-murder'. You have to doubt whether the likes of Capitán Vidal would have wasted so much time and effort on the surveillance of suspects that could instead simply be framed or arbitrarily disappeared.

Whereas del Toro tokened the evil of poe-faced political absolutism with elaborate and garish monsters, Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck chooses instead to restrict the tones of both his images and of his character's ethical imperatives to shades of grey and its closest neighbours on the palette.

Both films are the kind that you immediately want to see again. George had in fact only just seen it for the first time the night before. He and I experienced the Soviet Union at first hand in that landmark year of 1984 and after leaving the Chelsea Cinema last night we discussed the absence of primary colours (apart from the incriminating red of the typewriter ink) in the German writer-director's stunning debut film. We both recall the striking reds and blues of the political posters around Moscow and Leningrad, yet behind them the washed-out gloom of the Russian capital was nevertheless umistakeable in '84.

Compelling as it is, in one important respect the plot left us both wondering. What singular event turns Wiesler into a thought criminal? One minute he's tossing seat-covers to the sniffer dogs and the next he'd reading Brecht with a canny grin. Surely he would already have spotted the emptiness of his existence at some point before this particular surveillance gig? Perhaps it is the cynical, non-ideological origin of the operation against Dreyman and the wasteful suicide of the dramatist's friend Jerska that generate this seemingly unlikely spark of humanity.

Some years after the wall however, it's clear that poor old Wiesler has still not overcome his predeliction for over-snug, achromatic leisurewear.

Earlier George and I had watched Chelsea relinquish their Premiership title in the Duke of Wellington (technically Westminster: the other side of the street is where Chelsea proper begins) surrounded by soused sexagenarians, and accompanied by George's girlfriend Paula, a lifelong United fan. I do enjoy Jose Mourinho's interviews after his (always the better) team has come unstuck in crucial games. It's a necessarily intermittent form of entertainment, because if it happened too often diminishing returns would set in and I guess he'd get the sack, or become less arrogant.

The government's anti-descrimination legislation has reminded me just how much fun it is to watch pissed-off bigots on TV too. I'm sure that someone can come up with a new gameshow format to keep them on our screens after all the fuss over homosexual couples checking into Yorkshire B&Bs has died down.