There are too many reviews already praising this film indepth.
I just had to add that having been to Berlin a few years ago and visting the Checkpoint Charlie museum and reading about the history of the city during WWII and after – I was incredibly interested in how citizens of East Germany lived during those times. (I regretted then and now DEEPLY regret not finding time to visit the Stasi archives/ museum!)

That would have been enough for a great film, but the painful reality of our current government taking away our civil rights and warrantless wiretapping it’s citizens makes this resonate much more personally.

And I didn’t even make the connection to the fact that the film starts in 1984 (surely a nod to Orwell) until I read some other comments.

The film does have a few minor flaws, but it has so much resonance that it becomes a great film.

p.s. I kept thinking the main actor resembled Kevin Spacey – I’m sad to hear that he passed away. He was great and I would have liked to see him in more.

This was one of the best movies I’ve seen all year; it works on so many levels, as a thriller and a fascinating character study. I immediately watched it again with the director’s commentary on, and then I liked it even more. I was fascinated by the fact that the actor playing the Stasi officer had actually experienced surveillance as portrayed in the film, during his youth as an actor. Apparently after the wall fell, he read his Stasi file and discovered that many people he thought of as friends, as well as his wife of many years and the mother of his children, were listed as informants against him.

But the thing I have been talking about most, several days later, is the underlying theme of the movie. The director explained that his inspiration for the film came from an anecdote about Lenin. Lenin is quoted as saying that listening to the Appassionata made him want to stroke people’s heads, but he needed to smash their skulls in to accomplish his revolution; so he couldn’t listen to that music any more. The director was amazed at the power art and beauty have over people, and wondered what would happen if someone forced Lenin (or Hitler for that matter) to listen to such music. And this film is what came of that question.

The film really speaks to me about the impact art and beauty can have on the world. Maybe I’m no Mozart or Michaelangelo, but I can create beauty and joy too.

This was a long movie, but worth a watch. The end was subtle, but it brought a little tear to my eye. The whole story seems so real. The events portrayed in the film must happen all of the time. I liked how the film portrayed the character change in the main actor (the stasi). I find it so amazing how little things add up to make a big difference in life.