[Inaugurating a new series devoted to highlighting critical appraisals so far over the top that they're a show all by themselves:]
Paul Cantor, author of Gilligan Unbound, argues that The Lives of Others, Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck's study of life under surveillance in East Germany in the years leading up to the fall of the Soviet Union, "is the best feature film debut by a director since Orson Welles's Citizen Kane," leaving such mere also-rans as The 400 Blows, Breathless, Badlands, Eraserhead, and Being John Malkovich in the dust! Not content to describe it as the best feature debut in the past sixty-seven years by a director with a nine-syllable name, Cantor elaborates: "Evidently a perfectionist, Donnersmarck created a film that is near perfect in every respect. It deals seriously and profoundly with an important but sadly neglected subject—communist tyranny in East Germany—and the screenplay Donnersmarck carefully crafted over several years does full justice to his central theme of injustice. Contractually in full control of the production, Donnersmarck worried endlessly over the details and got them all right—historically and aesthetically. With creative costuming, location scouting, and artistic design, his production team captured the look and feel of the DDR (the German Democratic Republic) in the 1980s, above all in the predominantly grey color scheme of the film that subliminally establishes how drab and bleak life was under communist rule in the East." (Interviews conducted with people who actually somebody who was alive twenty whole years ago have firmly established that the sun never shown in a Communist republic.)
"Above all"--bet you thought that was it, didn't you, o ye of little faith--"for a low-budget production, The Lives of Others is extravagantly cast... The leading roles are all filled to perfection, and Donnersmarck pestered major German-speaking performers to play the minor roles, with the result that some of the actors turn in impressive performances without even having any lines to speak." That "pestered" really leaves you wanting to know more, doesn't it? ("Ach du lieber, that fellow with the script and the name that takes a month to say is climbing up the fire escape again! Didn't he say that he just wants to come in for an hour and stand at the back of a crowd scene with your eyes crossed? Tell him yes so we can get him our of our lives, or I'm going home to mother!") As befits a review that appeared in Christianity Today, Cantor does emphasize the film's "relentless indictment of communist tyranny", but he doesn't want to leave you with the idea that it isn't also a terrific thriller. "Although by Hollywood standards The Lives of Others is pitifully lacking in big-budget special effects—not a single car chase!—it has enough action and romance elements to work as entertainment. In fact, in its combination of cinematic artistry, intellectual depth, and sheer entertainment value, The Lives of Others reminds me of the best work of Fritz Lang and Alfred Hitchcock." And it has its lighter moments, too. In fact, it boasts "the funniest Erich Honecker joke I've ever heard."
