There are 35 comments.

1. Contributor
   Titus Techera

   @TitusTechera

   Post author

   4:26 PM EDT ⋅ Oct 30, 2017

   Glad you liked it–thanks for the kind words!

2. Member
   Flagg Taylor

   @FlaggTaylor

   7:15 AM EDT ⋅ Nov 1, 2017

   Quinn the Eskimo (View Comment):
   I just listened to the podcast. There was something that I noticed but I didn’t hear it commented on. I can’t tell if it was because it was too obvious or too obscure. It was the sense that Wiesler himself, in the process of the story, becomes a playwright. In faking his surveillance reports, he is making up scenarios and dialogue. In that sense, he is a participant in the creation of art, though obviously not in the same way that Dreyman is.

   BINGO!! Yes, important point.

3. Member
   Quinn the Eskimo

   @

   7:56 AM EDT ⋅ Nov 1, 2017

   Titus Techera (View Comment):
   Now, in the case of Wiesler, the political meaning of truth & lies or fact & fiction–what is it? He starts an enforcer for the regime. He delivers certain facts that mutilate the truth about the people he is involved with. & destroy those people, of course. When he stops delivering facts, he spares a life. He may think of himself as still enforcing for the regime–but against corrupt people who use it for private ends…

   I’d have to re-watch the movie.  It has been many years.  But these are men on contrasting paths.  One is an author of fiction who is working on a non-fiction piece about suicide.  The other is a man who writes reports about surveillance is who now creating fictional scenarios.  I’m not sure parallel is the correct word, but it is too striking (to me, anyway) to be purely coincidental.

4. Member
   Quinn the Eskimo

   @

   8:04 AM EDT ⋅ Nov 1, 2017

   You are going to make me re-watch the movie to defend this point, aren’t you?  Well, it is more than worth re-watching.

5. Member
   The Reticulator

   @TheReticulator

   8:08 AM EDT ⋅ Nov 1, 2017

   Quinn the Eskimo (View Comment):

   Titus Techera (View Comment):
   Now, in the case of Wiesler, the political meaning of truth & lies or fact & fiction–what is it? He starts an enforcer for the regime. He delivers certain facts that mutilate the truth about the people he is involved with. & destroy those people, of course. When he stops delivering facts, he spares a life. He may think of himself as still enforcing for the regime–but against corrupt people who use it for private ends…

   I’d have to re-watch the movie. It has been many years. But these are men on contrasting paths. One is an author of fiction who is working on a non-fiction piece about suicide. The other is a man who writes reports about surveillance is who now creating fictional scenarios. I’m not sure parallel is the correct word, but it is too striking (to me, anyway) to be purely coincidental.

   This reminds me that one of the specific things that bothered me after watching the director’s extras was the notion that listening to a piano piece could have been a key to turning the STASI surveillance agent and taming the savage beast.  That is an artistic conceit for which I doubt there is any evidence in real life. If on the other hand, such a thing could work, it would have to have been a Bach chorale that did it. :-)

   Like I said, I should have stopped after two watchings.