For those of you who still find subtitles a difficult proposition the German film ‘The Lives of Others’ (Das Leben der Anderen) will change your view forever.

Set during the last days of a divided Germany it sees a Stasi Captain,  Stasi Gerd Wiesler, monitoring the life of a celebrated German playwright, Georg Dreyman, who has something that the German Minister for the Arts wants; his girlfriend. Wiesler initially tries to find ‘the goods’ on Dreyman but soon finds himself being swayed by the life of the charismatic Dreyman as he eavesdrops on him.

‘The Lives of Others’ is a strange film in that it’s in part a fast paced thriller along the lines of great espionage movies like ‘The Third Man’ or ‘Tinker Taylor Soldier Spy’. But it’s also a deeply emotional film. At the heart of it are two men whose lives are being ruined by a crumbling regime and also the slow realisation that so much of what they’ve based their lives on is a lie.

The film ends a few years after the Berlin Wall has come done and it’s no exaggeration to say that it has one of the most affecting endings of any film you are ever likely to see.

In an age of Edward Snowden and Wiki-leaks people are viewing the film with its emphasis on surveillance, as being very much of ‘our time’. But this is a movie about any time in history where people are pitied against each other in the name of a ‘cause’. Watch it today. It won the Oscar for best Foreign Film in 2007 but should have won the overall best film. It’s outstanding. 

You can hear the whole chat from this Sunday's show here.....