my favorite movie of 2006:

The Lives of Others

[German: Das Leben der Anderen]

(Ulrich Mühe, Sebastian Koch, Martina Gedeck, Ulrich Tukur. Directed by Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck.)

You think we imprison people on a whim? No, if you think our humanistic system capable of such a thing, that alone would justify your arrest.

This surveillance-focused political/psychological thriller, set in East Germany in the ’80s, has such a beautifully ambiguous last line that it reminds me of Chaplin’s City Lights (my favorite movie of 1931).

A.O. Scott wrote in a New York Times review:

Posing a stark, difficult question — how does a good man act in circumstances that seem to rule out the very possibility of decent behavior? — [The Lives of Others] illuminates not only a shadowy period in recent German history, but also the moral no man’s land where base impulses and high principles converge. …

The suspense comes not only from the structure and pacing of the scenes, but also, more deeply, from the sense that even in an oppressive society, individuals are burdened with free will. You never know, from one moment to the next, what course any of the characters will choose. …

Stream The Lives of Others on these sites.

Click here for the full list of my favorite movie(s) of each year from 1920 to 2020.