Loved the characters,but very badly written film

We all look forward to you writing something much more worthy Monika, and we wish you luck with it.

AGREE

"Screw you, I'm in the West!"

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I don't think the characters are clichés in any bad sense. I'd say they are archetypal and fairly consistent.

The typical liberal rich intelligetsia are interested in politics, but are also afraid for their status. An idealistic and patriotic secret services officer consistently sees that the other side may be offering a better alternative, while his side is cynical and a failure. He grows disenchanted with his middle-aged life and his work, and decides to covertly help them. Such things happen pretty often in any regime, but seem to be fairly wide-spread in Eastern Europe, e.g., modern Russia.

This has an emotional appeal, of course, but so does the real thing. It is a worthy subject for a film.

I watched the film a couple of years ago, so perhaps I am missing some crucial details, but it seemed very solid to me.

I disagree with your original post.

In my opinion, the strongest idea of this film is that the weakest link of any system is THE human. And, that is perfectly shown in the sequence where the writer and his friends are scheming a way to find out if his house was bugged. A supposed robotic Stasi agent showed another dimension of his character and didn't deliver the message to border patrol, although it was expected of him, so, paradoxically, he remained uncovered. You can get to know and cheat strictly defined and rigid system, but you can never fully get to know an imperfect human being. That idea eventually translates to the whole film, since we see that unexpected behavior of one man is enough to shake the entire system.

Also, the change of the main character (the Stasi agent) is not at all sudden. The crucial scene is the one with a prostitute where it is obvious that the agent is a lonely and desperate man. I would argue that his change didn't come from without (he didn't suddenly saw how bad the system is, he knew it already), but from within (his psychological state led him to make his relationship with a lonely writer personal, rather than professional).

Also, I'd like to make clear that although I am strongly against totalitarian systems, I also quite vigorously oppose hypocritical black vs white films which try to state that the Western "democracy" is the personification of the human kindness. This film is certainly not one of those and is much more complex.





***70s - the time when even Stallone had to make a decent film***

Wait... what???????

As an artist myself, criticizing is NECESSARY. Otherwise there would be no standards, everything would just be "great". Haven't you ever heard of a critique?

Also, it's incredibly hypocritical to "tear down" this movie for your entire post and throw in there somewhere that you "hate criticizing" works of art because all critics do is tear it down......... isn't that what you're doing.......... LOL

This movie was not at all about "handsome actors" or "romantic cheesy soap stories". Where would you even get an opinion like that from? Did you even watch the movie? So weird... :(

Wait... what??????? That makes no sense whatsoever.

As an artist myself, criticizing is NECESSARY. Otherwise there would be no standards, everything would just be "great". Haven't you ever heard of a critique?

Also, it's incredibly hypocritical to "tear down" this movie for your entire post and throw in there somewhere that you "hate criticizing" works of art because all critics do is tear it down... isn't that what you're doing?

This movie was not at all about "handsome actors" or "romantic cheesy soap stories". Where would you even get an idea like that from? Did you even watch the movie? So weird... :(

Maybe you should watch it again, except this time without focusing on how attractive the actors look or seeing it as a romantic movie, and actually pay attention to the story and what happens to the characters along the way.