Upstream - S2E12.5: The Lives of Others

Episode Date: November 17, 2022

This week, Alice takes us to the GDR as we watch our first-ever German-language movie, a movie that poses the question: What if a Stasi guy got into a parasocial relationship with the people he is assigned to monitor? ------ THE WINTER OF CONTENT The UCU has a fighting fund that you can contribute to here: https://www.ucu.org.uk/fightingfund If you do feel you have money to spare, please consider supporting your local food banks with money or time! donate to the Trussell Trust here: https://www.trusselltrust.org/make-a-donation/ or the Independent food aid network here: https://www.foodaidnetwork.org.uk/donate There are several ongoing strike funds that could do with some donations, and several can be found here: https://www.cwu.org/ Additionally, please consider joining a renter's union like ACORN, as rising mortgage rates will surely result in rising rent, here: https://www.acorntheunion.org.uk/join ------ Consider supporting us on our reasonably-priced patreon! https://www.patreon.com/killjamesbond ------   *WEB DESIGN ALERT*  Tom Allen is a friend of the show (and the designer behind our website). If you need web design help, reach out to him here:  https://www.tomallen.media/   Kill James Bond is hosted by Alice Caldwell-Kelly, Abigail Thorn, and Devon. You can find us at https://killjamesbond.com and https://twitter.com/killjamesbond

Guten Abend, liebe Sonne. Was hast du? Und dann sagt die Sonne, ach, lege mich doch am Arsch, ich bin jetzt im besten. Ja, ja. Ja, Name. Wir ins Grat, Teilung. Good, now, and leave her listener. Halor and Vilkommen, Nakh, another episode of Kill James Bond. I am Alaskur, Dukheli.

Joining me is always, aren't my friends Abigail Thorne and Devon. Bon Jo-no. Hello. And I've done the thing, right? I'm not gonna do that. Ex-guide. I've done the thing again, where I'm like,

oh, I do a comedy podcast where we talk about bad movies. Wouldn't it be fun to have like an hour and a bit of quite earnest discussion about a good movie? Doesn't that fit well inside that paradigm? I love to do this. Yeah. So I made you guys watch the lives of others. That's Leibn von Androm, which is a German movie about East Germany, and obviously that's going to be a laugh riot. So you can settle in for some jokes,

some goofs, some smooths. Yeah, I mean, it was very different than the last film you made us watch about East Germany. I was expecting there to be like singing and trans women, but no, sadly, this one is just about like surveillance. Yes, yeah, but I'm interested to talk about this one. And I wanted you guys to see it because I think it says a lot about institutions in ways

that I'm interested in. I'm going to try and use this as a prison to address the cop thing, but also about parasociality and about surveillance. What if what if what if the guy in the penopticon was nice? Actually, you know, I don't know this. What if he's looking out for what if there was somebody listening to the things that you said? Like what have you thought you know. I don't know this, but what if he's looking out for it? What if there was somebody listening to the things that you said? Like, what if you thought you were having a conversation

with your friends, but actually there was some weird fucking pervert somewhere who was listening in on everything you were doing? Fucked up. The Penopticon's never hit home for me honestly, because like, I imagine if I was put into a Penopticon, every other prisoner would be fine, because the dude would just be looking at me

the entire time. 24-7. Literally placed myself in a penopticon for a living. Yeah. The thing about the penopticon is, it's very cool. Getting a note from the guard in the tab in like, yo, you sickle. Drop the skin care routine queen.

Getting a note sends a cross from the guard. It's like, I think it's so cool how you don't do any voice work. So we begin in 1980s, it's like 1995, East Berlin, in Berlin, Hunchonhausen prison, where the prisoner being escorted down a corridor and some lights come on automatically and the guard stops him and makes him look at the floor so he doesn't even get to make

eye contact with another prisoner. Yeah, we'll say that was something that I found quite harrowing about this film is that it is the 1980s period piece, but the 1980s, like, wasn't that long ago and some of the aesthetics of it, like the cars and the clothes and stuff, do still feel pretty modern. So it's kind of scary to see, like, this is how bad things were extremely recently, like, my brother was alive when this sort of thing was happening. I wasn't, of course, because I wasn't born for the 15 years, but this is still, like, it's quite sort of, it's very scary, actually. Oh, yeah. And it well this is the thing, it's, it's certainly within not even living memory, relatively recent living memory in Germany too.

And as our, our prisoner was brought in, he sees his interrogator, Starzy Officer, a half-man Viesler, who is played by Ulrich Müur, sadly, very sadly, like died quite young. Oh. Pretty soon after this movie came out, it's a great actor. Oh, shit. His performance in this is so good. He's phenomenal in this movie. Yeah.

The thing that I want to talk about and why I mention Ulrich Muir is because he was an East German border guard during his national service. Wow. And he was then a dissident against these Germans as an actor. And, you know, protested against him. After the war came down, he found out that four of his colleagues and his wife had been Stasi Informants.

They asked him for an interview during the press round for this, how he prepared for this role. He just said, I remembered. That's all I wanted. That's all I wanted. Near to what we're dealing with. His wife was a starsy informant. Yeah, she's a fizziella, a mitar biter, an unofficial collaborator.

That's a sick surname, Mr. a biter. No, that's what the stars he called their informant was, was EMS, I am's inefficial mitar biter. But so, fuck that embarrassing. How to mind, Vue Slow, this star's the agent, interrogates this man. And we see this is intercut with him teaching. He's recorded this, he's playing it back

on a big sort of very 80s tape recorder to a class of students at the star's the training school in Potsdam as like a model interrogation. And the guy being interrogated claims, you know, he knows nothing, what he's being interrogated for is one of his neighbors has has fled to West Joan. He's committed a republic fluke. He has like Desserted the Republic and they want to know whether he like knew about this whether he assisted him and initially he says, you know No, I didn't know anything. I was with my friend at this in this time

um and the interrogation just repeats and at this and this time, and the interrogation just repeats and repeats. And we see a sort of like passage of time until he's been like so sleep deprived and been asked these questions so many times that he's repeating exact phrases about where he went and in the classroom. Do you think about when you jack off again and again and again? That's right. It's a bold choice, I think, to introduce this character to the torturing someone, which is what sleep deprivation is. And I think this is going to get into sort of how we approach this film as a morality play. This is the implication that he's been doing for years. This team gets flagged up by one of the students in the class who asks him, surely this is

inhumane to keep him awake for this long. And we get a little shot of him just marking a little x against that guy's name in the ceiling plan. Something I have done many times as a teacher. plan? Something I have done many times as a teacher. So we're going to get a great deal out of certain repeated words. And one of them is meantch. It means human or humanity in German, but to translate it naturalistically into English, you would have to use it in its context as five different words. You would have to say human, man, guy, stuff like that. So I'm probably going to use it unt its context and like as like five different words you would have to say like human man guy stuff like that. So I'm probably going to like use it untranslated here. So what the

student says is that is stuck with menchlich. It's you know you can't keep him awake for that long it's inhuman. And he just sort of like quietly notes this and he explains that like no the reason why we do this is because these are the enemies of socialism. Yeah, he also says that an innocent person when kept and treated in this manner would become angry at the injustice of it, but a guilty person, like he says this prisoner, will fall back on stock phrases, will repeat themselves, will become quieter and withdrawn and cry. And it's interesting, it's an interesting choice by the filmmakers that we never find out whether this prisoner was innocent or guilty. It wasn't until we started flashing forward to the class that I even realized the prisoner wasn't our protagonist. Yeah, no, he, and he breaks, of course, under torture and he confesses, we know not whether truthfully

or not that his neighbor was involved in this escape and like assisted his other neighbor or whatever. And then we get an interesting historical detail which is after the president was then taken out of the interrogation room, we hear on the recording, Vista take the covering the upholstery off of his seat to use as like an odysampal for dogs. And this is true, the Stasi did this routinely, and there are jars and jars of these seat cushions just in records to this day. I know it's smell crazy in there. Yeah, well, also one thing we see is that they threaten the prisoner's family. Yes. And that's what eventually gets him to confess truthfully or otherwise. And at this point, we have Colonel Lieutenant Colonel Grewbit's enter the classroom.

I love this guy. He's such a fucking shit for this performance. He's so good. I really like him. He's so good. Yeah, Ulrich Tuker. He's a really likeable character. He's like, he's like, thoroughly despicable.

Yeah. Yeah, Ulrich Tuker. He's a really likable character, this might be like thoroughly despicable. Yeah, yeah. And he's friends with Viesler, and we kind of get the impression that he's better at politics than him, that Viesler kind of like has been doing his homework for him for like X number of decades. And yeah, it is.

And they have a good relationship. You know, so Viesler is very like straightener a very idealist He looks kind of like a monk to yes, this very Close cropped hair very intense expression and they hardly ever blink some camera which I assume was a deliberate choice by the actor But he's he's I mean as as his job suggests he he's always watching. And it's just a really, his screen presence is just absolutely magnetic. He seems like a weird robot and it's so good. Yeah. And so, Grover's goes, listen, I'm going to take you to the theatre,

and I'm going to make both of our careers because I have an in here. And so they go to the theatre. The production of a play by Gail Gdryman, who we see, being surveilled by our two stars, you know, from a box already. They're not even like watching him yet. They're just watching in general. And Visa has the little opera glasses, his little binoculars, the watch people. So cute. or people. It reminds me of a joke about, it's an old old joke I can't remember who, about like a

psychiatrist is someone who goes to the Foley Bergera and watches the audience. They asked them have a jack up. That's right. Well, exactly. And so Vista is watching the audience of this play and this is a film that loves theatre. It basically is a three-act play. Yeah, it is. It's very much a play. And Dreyman is an intellectual. He's his playwright. As a group, it's notes, but I think it's a really great sort of sly observation about the GDR. He says, he's our only non-subversive writer who's also read in the West. It speaks to such like this doth of talent, right? That it's this guy. He's the only one who's, like, worth reading. Everyone else has either been suppressed or has

run away. Exactly. Yeah. But he loves the country. And this is this arch sort of way. He says he thinks he thinks the GDR is the greatest country in the world. There's sort of smiles. And the lead actress of this play, Chris Tamaria Cieland, who is Draman's girlfriend. And sort of, we see Vieslo watch her and he has a little reaction, but more importantly, down in the audience, we have the most repulsive man in this movie,

or possibly any movie I she never went on. This code in a sea just a proper dickhead. This horrible reptilian pig man is different from what it's so good. I'm not going to be accurate. Bruno Hemp, the minister of culture. I got to be clear yet. The way that this character acts means that all three of us going, I hate this cunt, kill him dead right now is just a firm compliment. He's so well. He's

literally the dude in in the Chernobyl miniseries who just is like, yeah, I used to be in charge of a pencil factory and now I'm the head to the workers of the world. Yeah, but that for an hour and a half, it's just fantastic. Yes. Yeah. And we see, Gruett tells Vistler, yeah, he's one of our guys. Hemf, he used to be a starzie man. He got promoted into this. And he asked Vistler what he would do about dry man.

And Vistler, who is like, we come to see inherently suspicious, is like, no, yeah, I would definitely surveil him, because he's quite arrogant looking, and I don't, you know, I don't approve of this. This is a good site. Yeah, just like, based on literally the way he looks and stands, they're like, yeah, we should put this man out of his taste surveillance. Yeah, of course.

So, so Hemp calls,oherts down to meet with him. And we have the first of what I think is one of the great pieces of this movie, which is conversations where there are like, there are two conversations going on at once, and where sort of like, there's an implicit meaning that has to stay under the surface. And so, what happens there is that Hemp asks Grooherts, what do you think of, what do you think of Dryman? And Groovitz correctly realizes that he's being told to surveil him. He sort of picks up Vistler's instinct.

He goes, well, I wouldn't trust him necessarily. And Hemp even like sort of lightly makes fun of this. He's like, well, you know, a sort of a lesser man, ordinary starsy man would be like, oh, he's one of our best, he's, you know, above reproach, but that's why you and me going to the top. Yeah, it's quite fun actually that, that crew bits sort of passes off weaselers insight or suspicions as if they were his own. It's kind of like, again, like copying his homework. Yeah, but what I like about it is that I think it's him

being able to read hemp for bit and being able to understand that he's being told to do this. And so he agrees to do this. But then we see a bit more of why hemp is doing this because we get a sort of an after party after the play. And hemp is looking at is looking at dryman and and zealand dancing together with sort of undisguised, purely atavistic sexual envy resentment and he's just staring. He has a crush on crystal. He wants it. And then he kind of threatens slash teases

drama in a in a cover way. He's like, oh, you know, how's your friend this this uh, Jessica, this director, Yuka, this director who's been blacklisted. And drama's like, well, yeah, he's really upset about being blacklisted and him for saying, we know blacklist people. No, of course that. I think that has to work again. You should be careful what you say using words like blacklist. Yeah. And also he grobes Christa. Yes.

Yeah. Yes. And all of this dialogue, I think, is quite sort of true to history. And the GDR allowed certain kinds of descent and often a surprising amount within this layer of like hope or irony or even sarcasm where it was very clear that and this is something that comes up in all the conversations that there's a line, right? And if you don't, if it's along with you don't cross that line, it's all right.

Maybe like slightly risky, but there's there's a sort of napluce ultra, there's a line in the stand, you can't go over that once you do, you're just out. And this is what's happened to Yaskar, right, and so he's been blacklisted. But Draman can still, you know, sort of make representations for him. He can still sort of, as long as he doesn't say blacklist, he's allowed that much. And it's, like, I think, a quite clever observation about how East German authoritarianism in particular works. I like the quote directly from Dremel, which I enjoyed was just like, my players aren't

strong enough to survive this guy's direction. I need Yaskar. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They've put, they've placed a like loyal director on his play and it's he's not good. Yeah, it's interesting actually and I think quite clever the way that it portrays this surveillance state and authoritarianism, not as completely rigid and kind of rule based. But actually in a far more sinister way that there is flexibility, but it's always arbitrary.

That the use of power, you're never quite sure whether you are in the clear or whether you have crossed the line. You're never really allowed to know what the rule is because it's the business of the people who have control over your life to know what the rule is. And I think this is very kind of astutely observed. Hemf also has a great line that I want to draw out in this conversation. Well, he proposes

a toast, which is quite a menacing toast. One that is like openly covetous of Christa, but also like quite threatening towards Gaul. Well, he quotes Stalin. He quotes Stalin's saying, you know, the poet's the engineer of the human soul, which is like provocative. So he makes this toast. And then he has this line where he talks about Yaskar and he says, people don't change. It only happens in your plays. You want this idea that people can change. They can get better because you're a moralist and an optimist, people can change, they can get better because you're a moralist and an optimist, but it doesn't happen. And that is like, from where we, like, having seen the movie from where we know what happens to these characters, it's brussel, but also just as a piece of like German history for an East German bureaucrat to be able to say people don't change is so,

so interesting because you have this idea of like this long parade of German 20th century history of like a lot of people like this, a lot of bureaucrats, a lot of like sort of potentates, just sort of switching ideology as convenient, you know, liberals becoming Nazis, becoming social Democrats, becoming communists, becoming liberals again. So long as they can keep being cops. That's right. Yeah, well exactly, exactly. And I have something

more to say about this when we get to the sort of the third act of this movie, but it struck me as a very sort of like a very salient line. It's sort of like it's an underlying cynicism there about power that I really like. But so, and there about power that I really like. But so, Viesler has to go and put the surveillance operation up. Just quickly. Something I enjoyed a great deal is after this long scene of the party in the Raymond's apartment, we get Viesler going home to his own apartment,

and it's just like dire and empty. And it's really put across because like they keep putting in these long tracking shots across his apartment to show how like there's nothing in it at all. His dinner is like spaghetti with some fucking tomato puree put on top of it and mixed in like it's horrible. It's very plain but also my notes say his flat is sterile and Spartan but it's also like it's really nice. It's horrible. It's very plain, but also, my notes say, his flat is sterile and Spartan, but it's also like, it's really nice. It's a very spacious flat like, I'm so many people who I know in London were walking in bed like, what, you do the right, aren't you? Yeah, forget me and remember the starzy, isn't it? Because he works for the starzy, yeah.

It's sort of this perverse thing with the state has rewarded him for being the kind of person who is unable to appreciate its rewards. I really, really like that. Yeah, there's definitely something I adore about giving this character a very nice but completely empty apartment. Yeah, it's especially set to post against the full party in the previous scene. Yeah, especially against Draman's Fabbage, which we see is kind of full of knickknacks and art and books and stuff.

It's like smaller and not as nice, but it's full of life. And we see we see Dramon's flatt now because we see the follows Dramon spires on him and then it's thoughts a bunch of bugs in his home. And there is a fucking incredible bit where Dremen's neighbor sees them installing the bugs in the flat, and we see that approaches her door, knocks on it, opens it, immediately addresses her by name, and threatens her daughter by name as well. Yes.

It's just like... For a miniker. Yes. For a miniker, if you tell anyone about this little martyr who would lose her place at Yeah, it's like if you, if you tell anyone about this little Martin Luther place at university and it's like, the amount of like, he's not like one of the names. He's just, he, he, he knows he was prepared to thread this woman.

I absolutely massively love that because to me, that's very indicative of the, the German sense of itself. Because I think if an American film was doing a similar scene, they would have their agent knock on a door and just like, be like, just like speak to them like normal, and then on the way out, be like, by the way, how's Marta doing at college, or something like that, like imply knowledge. But the German, he just stands down, goes, don't tell anyone, or Marta's going to lose a place at college, and then moves on immediately and I find that interesting. That's like a national. Absolutely. Yeah.

So he sets up all of the sort of bugs behind the light switches. Cable's running through the walls and stuff. Threatened trominic on the way out. And this does speak to the sort of like the depth of knowledge that the Stasi had. And it truly is incredible. We see later some of the files in different contexts, and there's miles and miles and miles upon them. And that's accurate.

I mean, the Stasi generated more written records of like German history than any German government ever since the Middle Ages. Depending on who you ask, between one in 50 and one in seven East Germans was an informant for the Stasi. This is not unsupported. No, so, so, so, Draman goes to visit his his friend Yerska, his black Western, and kind of like gives him a bit of false hope. We see that Yerska is

a bit down in the dumps because he's like, I can't direct my careers over. That's another thing. That's it's another one of those conversations where they both kind of know the other one is lying. Because what Hemp has told him is, well, he can still hope because hope's the last thing to die. It's like a taunting sort of like, no, he's never gonna work again thing. And sort of, Draman has to recount this selectively,

and he says, well, he said there's hope, and he asks a kind of nods, and they neither of them really believe it, but it's sort of this, subtextual thing that I really like. And then Dramon has a birthday party, but he invites his friends and Christy is there. We see that Christy is taking pills secretly. We don't know what they are.

Everyone lies. Everyone keeps secrets. Yeah. And we see there is listening, silly, there it is headphones like listening in to this party, trying to sort of catch people to do something. And again, it's phenomenal juxtaposition because you get the party,

which is like full of these artists who are having like, as good a time as you can have when everyone's paranoid about the starsy, but it keeps getting cut back to Vizla in his like listening outpost, which is this like derelict attic, and he's just completely on his own listening to this. And really, it's just that that's really good.

I like this movie a great deal. I gotta be honest, yeah. Yerska is out the party, but he's not having fun. Like a specter at the feast, and he leaves some appresant. But then a drone has pulled away because his friend, Paul Hauser, who is kind of a dissident, but not quite as bad as Yaskin, therefore has not been ostracized, gets in a fight with the director that the state has imposed upon him.

And says that he works for the starry. And Draman has like pushed him away and like, I apologize for him and stay politic. And how's the says to him, you know he's with the star sea. And Draman goes, no, I don't know that. Talk about a fucking intellectual leku. Yeah, yeah. Right there. Because it's not, I don't know that.

I cannot know this. It's something that like, I don't know that. It's, I cannot know this. It's something that like, I'm aware of, but I cannot like allow myself to acknowledge. It's great. And then we get mentally excited again, because houses says, don't talk to me again. If you're gonna work like this, if you're gonna become like them.

If you don't take a stand, you're not human. So. And then we have a really, really amazing bit of filmmaking because after the party, Dreyman and Krista has sex and we get some like swelling music and like we get like all the stuff that you would expect as you know, two characters lean in and kiss and have a romantic moment. And then we just get a hard cut to music even cuts out to weasel the like tapping way on his typewriter being like, Drainman and Krista presumably have intercourse.

Ting! It's really good. It's like, it's terrible. It's really a little moment. So, at this point, we get the fucking canteen scene, which is absolutely with love- I love this scene. Hands down, it's so good. Vesla and Grover are getting lunch in the stars of your canteen, and Vesla sits down

at a sort of like regular table, and Grover goes, wait a second, we're offices, you don't have to sit there. And in a sort of like beautiful sort of moment of being a true believer, he says, well, socialism has to start somewhere. So they sit down with their food and next to them, some more junior officers are talking, and one of them comes in, he's like, I've got a new joke, which is the joke that you heard at the beginning. And this is a historical joke. In fact, I will just recount is the joke that you heard at the beginning. And this is a historical joke.

In fact, I will just recount you the joke. Eric Hanukkah, the general secretary of the party, is in his office. He sees the sun outside in the morning. He says, good morning, dear son. And the sun says, good morning, dear Eric. And at this point point he notices the two much more senior officers sitting next to me Catches himself and he's like Maybe I shouldn't tell this joke And I don't know if it's the one I guess let it go on I can't believe it

It's so hard in the scene Yeah, yeah, good, it's like going on He's like I probably know it in fact Grimmit imitates Hanukkah's voice in order to get into his like good and Morgan libous honor and It mutates Hanukkah's voice in order to get into his life. Good morning, Leibhazanna. And he, like, I've probably heard it. It's fine. Go ahead, we're all friends here.

So he's persuaded into continuing with the joke in the afternoon. Hanukkah gets up from his desk, looks at the sun and says, Good afternoon, dear son. And the sun says, good afternoon, dear Eric. And then in the evening, as he's packing up his things, he goes to the window, he sees the sun, he says, good evening dear son, and the sun doesn't answer.

So he tries again, he says, good evening dear son, the sun says kiss my ass, I'm in the West now. It's really good, and like everyone is laughing, and like, laughing goes, ah, ah, ah, name. Ranked department. No. But she's just so fucking perfect, it's so perfect, laughing and he goes, ah, name? Ranked department? No!

Which is just so fucking perfect, it's so perfect and it keeps cutting to, to is like, clearly hates this. Yeah, and the studio is like, I'm just fucking fucking shitting his pants. This group is just like, I'm just gonna have to write you up, I'm gonna have to report you for this man, that's supposed to behave here and then group it turns it around and goes, ah, let it go, can we do that? I'm already full to report you for this man. That's supposed to behave there. And then Groove it turns it around and goes, ah, let it choke him with you that. I'm already full of you, like. Hey, he tells a worse joke, which is,

what's the difference between Hanukkah and a telephone? You hang them up and then you try again, which is a noiv island. It's a German pun for hanging up a telephone and voting for someone else. So he tells a joke about hanging the guy and set some of his, it's a much stronger version of the same joke as done in Death of Stalin, where Zhukov plays it on cruise Japanese.

It's like, you know, it's important, the Central Committee member is a it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, grubits before this joke scene happens. Grubit says, look, I read your reports from Savaylick Draman and you wrote down that Minister Hemp picked Chris her up and took her home the other night. I've removed that from the record. You didn't see that, okay? So we kind of get a bit of confirmation that this is a romantic rivalry and that this is kind of hemp Misusing the organs of state to try and get rid of a romantic rival and We still we see that we see that we see that it was like slightly upset by this misuse of power and grubits It's like whatever man just like find something on

Yeah, yeah, and therefore find something And we also and then we see minister have and pick up Christa in his car and wave rapes. Yeah, this is a lot. Yeah, I'll let you start. Well, I think this is worth talking about as a an sort of heavy, inverted commas here, good rapes scene, right? In that it makes us sympathize with her. She is like a whole person. We feel her loss of dignity. Keely hemp, on the other hand, is not just menacing, but also ridiculous. Yeah. He's pathetic. He's not portrayed as like powerful or, or, or, or kind of strong or grimy and unpleasant. Like it's just, yeah, yeah.

And it's also, we see the kind of mounting tension as the horror of the scene unfolds. This, this really sort of, it's was in a way mundane horror. It's one camera angle and it doesn't cut. I was just looking at the back seat of the car and it's just, it's, it's such a surprise for me. We also get some grubby, like, and uncomfortable, like, good word. Cause it, it's, you're just in the back of this car, it's like one camera, it doesn't change and you're just, you're stuck in that with them.

There's some, there's some great sort of voyeurism there as well because we see just a little shot cut into this. I think it's the one shot that's cut into this of hemp's driver watching them in the rearview mirror. And it's just like, oh, this is total surveillance. It just encompasses everything including this. And it's so uncomfortable and desperate. And so, Vieselas in his surveillance attic, in what I thought of as like the moment where it starts to get parosocial,

he has chalked out their floor plan of their apartment on the floor below him so that he can like sort of like follow their movements. And he sees on the camera outside that Hemp's car is dropping Christ off and he at this moment sort of breaks with protocol. This is the part where he goes off the resolution. The version he makes an intervention. He does. He makes the way. He starts trying to interfere with the Blobos from his show. That's right.

That's right. He interferes with their intercom to try and like get dry when to go down to unlock the door and get him to see Christopher coming out of the car. And what I'm interested in is to me, this is in part the movie about institutions about bureaucracy. Any bureaucracy doing anything needs it to share of true belief. There's different ways of being a true belief. It needs it to share of ideal. And I think often unintentionally even, part of the function of a system to preserve itself is to compartmentalize those idealists, to keep them doing stuff that they're comfortable with.

Whether that's, you know, that there's stuff that the sergeant doesn't tell the left-hand, or whether it's like, I don't work on missiles, I work on guidance ships that I'm gonna go into into missiles and I don't think about that extra step. There's this sort of like intellectual quarantine that's going on and Vistler is like just breaking that containment immediately and quite violently to be like no, it is time for some bitter truths is what he says. And so he facilitates this.

He makes dryman see what hemp is doing. Yeah, he makes the doorbell rings so that dryman, you know, thinks this somebody's stuck outside if we've got their keys. And dryman goes down and sees Christa getting out of hemp's car. Mm-hmm. And immediately puts it together and immediately sort of like into it's what this means.

And so when she comes back to the apartment, she gets in the shower to try and wash everything off of her. And it's her. He is. It is. And he comforts her. And they lie in bed together, he embraces her. you know, they lie in bed together, he embraces her. And this fucking shot is of, that relationship, that imagined relationship, that need to be held and comforted and protected, if I can set that up against hemp and his sort of like grimy, predatory instincts, it's really it's quite something. And just the composition of that one cut from shot to shot, I could talk about that for hours. Yeah. We also see the we also see the whitester is getting even more involved in their lives because he

walks around Dramon's flat when Dramon isn't home and he even steals a book from him and again because this this film likes theater, it's a book by Bracht. So he's starting to just like, you know, just move into the flat whenever Draman's not in. Which is so, so cute. We also see that he hires a sex worker because he wants to like, again, this idea of him wanting to feel sort of close to someone or to be held by someone. And then we learn that Yerska has sadly hanged himself.

I do want to talk about the sex-wise, because it's quite brief. And the fact that it's brief is, is worthwhile as noticeable to me, because he can't have a meaningful relationship with someone. The state doesn't facilitate these sorts of things. And so the kind of sex worker that he gets to come to the block full of starsy offices apartments is very business-like and very remote and is just like, yeah, I'm on the clock. And there's a joke in there, in fact.

He, like, gives her directions up and she's like, oh, yeah, I know. I'm in here all the time. And it's just sort of like, oh, this is, this is like a puck, right? This is something that you get for like serving the state. It's like a TV, or it's like the, you know, having a slightly nicer apartment. And much like the slightly nicer apartment, he doesn't really know what to do with it. Um, he, it's sort of like it's, it's lost on him. There's something there that is like alienating him from it. Um, but so, uh, Yerska, yeah, we're told that Yerska has killed himself. Um, Draman plays the music that Yerska gave him, which I think is called like Symphony

to a good man or something. Yeah, he plays it again. Sonata von Guten Mention. Sonata von Guten Mention. Sonata von Guten Mention again. Um, Mention again. And uh, we stays, of course, listening to this. I'm a bit of a shuffling guy. Um, he's like listening in, uh, on headphones and he's moved to tears, but... Probably so, yeah.

Yeah. Yeah, incredible shot as it just like, the camera slowly pans around we're still facing, we just get him like crying as the music swells. It reminds me quite a lot of equilibrium, which we make an interesting companion piece of this film. A movie about when you start taking estrogen. Yep. But as he's we've been listening to the thing, Draman says, like, you know, can anyone who's actually heard this, like actually heard it be a bad person. And also, this is something I want to talk about.

Gail DeVeasler's iconic jacket. Yeah, I want to talk about a jacket if I can whip this thing. It genuinely does. So, so, so the whole movie he's wearing mostly over a suit, this sort of gray nylon jacket that is supposed to be ugly. I think it, folks. We see him come home and he has one jacket. It's like the one thing in his house that he like hangs up. And first of all, that's great in and of itself. It builds both character and setting that, he's only got one jacket and he feels no need to get any more, feels

no need to like change or adapt to fashion around a thing like that. Just happy with his like, his gray thing, which looks quite monastic as well, but also he wears it zipped up really tight around the neck the whole time. When he's listening to, when he's listening to the music, it's the first time we see him with the code, sort of like undone a bit more. That's... We also get quite a funny moment where we stick on his home after this and he's in the lift and a small child gets in with him and says, are you really with the starsy? It is like who told you that? It says, oh my father did, it says, do you know what the starsy is in the chart

Yeah, you're the bad people who put people in prison It's really good. I wrote down kids at earth biggest snitches My dad says the star is the bad and he goes that's interesting was What's the name of your and then like stops and I said? Ball Yeah, he very nearly destroys this child's life. And then decides what to do, which is cute. Yeah, I really enjoyed that.

I think that's like maybe one of the most important character moments for this guy in the entire thing. He's like, he's starting to change. So he's like, hang on. Wait, I'm gonna. What if being a cop is bad? It's the only time where someone makes fun of him is because he like forcing himself not to do the cop thing He he allows himself to be made fun of because he says what's the name of your ball and the kid says balls don't have names

You're weird Yeah, oh now we get this fucking incredible scene between Dramon and Christa so Christaa. So Christa is going to meet Minister Hemp and she says, oh, I'm just going to go meet my classmate and Dramon says, look, I know you're not. I know you're going to meet Hemp. And he says, you don't need him to be successful. He's like, you know, you're a fucking good actor. You've got talent. Your audience loves you. You don't need to give into this blackmailer. And she says, like, fuck you. Yes, I fucking do. Like, you don't understand what it is like to be an actor and to have

talent in a society where you do not have the institutional power. Like, you don't know what I was saying. Yes, I do fucking need to go and see this man. She does. There's a brutal minor. She directly. The real knife here is where she says, you get in bed with them too. Yes, I was going to wire that up too. Which is just, I mean, she's not wrong. And it's it's quite a keen thing to to to to posit this as, no, this isn't any any any worse or any better. So this is this is interchangeable. We're both sort of degrading ourselves here. Yeah, and I really, really felt for Christopher in this scene because to give you a peek

behind the curtain here listeners, an acting career is extremely fragile thing. Like even if you're doing well, it can be ripped away in an instant. I've spent all of this last week as the ball in a game of tennis between my agent and a very big studio who are like, they offered me a part and then took it away and then offered it and took it away and

I've been like, been bounced back and forth and it just fucking shreds your nerves. So I really felt the question this thing, I'm like, yeah, I fucking do need to do this actually because you may think that I have talent, but talent actually doesn't fucking pay the bills. Well, pay the bills is paying the fucking bills. That's right. Yeah and so she walks out. And at this point, we see there's like let let off by his his replacement for the night shift. His replacement who is a pig by the way. This this sergeant, the fact that he's a sergeant will become important laser,

but who is very much of the mold of like, oh, arseist, I bet they're having sex right now. And it's just generally sort of not very bright, which is something that we'll see sort of vissela exploit later. But he goes to the, you know, very sort of Berlin movie, goes to the Ecknäper, the corner bar pub across the streets. Yeah. And we see him drink.

He orders vodka instead of like, he orders us like a seltzer and then catches himself and orders like a double vodka. And we get a shot of him, which is one of, this is a great shot. It's, he is facing towards the camera. He's in focus. In the background is the door to the pub and through that comes our last, come Sealand. Yeah, Krista. Yeah. And he sort of, he introduces himself to her as a fan. Yeah. He makes the ballchains other interviews. I really love your videos. The watching videos actually came out because of you. Yeah, the shit is extremely powerful.

For us, it's such a... Yeah, we've had this all the same. It's different when you have a podcast. Yeah, yeah. She's agonizing about whether to go to heaven, or to go back to dryman. She's drinking to get to such courage. Yeah. And he goes, you're a great actor. And I'm your audience, he says in a fantastic

double meaning. This is a recurring word again, publicum audience will come up again. But yes, she asks, just flat out, should I, you know, should I sell myself for art? He says, you already have art, there'd be a bad deal. She's a great label. But just the thing about surveillance, right, is that you are seen, you are perceived. And Christus thing is that no one else is seeing her. And so that he is able to do this,

that he is able to like know what is going on in her life and is like able to advise her sort of however tacitly to go back to dry man is so powerful. And what's really funny is that he sort of accidentally becomes the way the stars he always wanted to present themselves as just like just looking out for the sort of like individual proletariat. Right. He is in this instance trying to look after her in a way that is creepy and vicarious and voyeuristic, but still well intentioned. It literally has like slogans on the tube in London

from the Met Police that are like, well looking out for you. Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. Fucking hell, man, fucking cough. Anyway, Jesus, thanks very much. You're a good man, which again, an echo of what we had before. And in the morning, we used to go back to the Svelan's attic, and he reads the report from the sergeant overnight and he reads that the crystal went back to Draman.

She didn't go and see the minister after all and she kind of like broke their date. She went back and just shagged Draman's brains out. So good stuff. Yeah. And of course, the sergeant, because he is ignorant and misogynist and lazy. Has no idea what to make of this. And so the way he's written this up is he has no idea. So can she say, she'll never leave again. And she's like, I'm not sure what she means by this. Maybe she intends to take better care of the household. There's a point where you get like the shot of the report and there's a number of points where he's got like a question mark in brackets within the little pros, I find to be very.

Yeah. So, Dreyman has begun work on an article inspired by Yerska's death about suicide in the GDR and about how it's more like- Just the case you worry this film was going to do happylessness. Yeah. Because suicide in the GDR is like one of almost, like basically a handful of unreported statistics. And it's a state that collates information and tabulates everything. And it does not record suicide because there are so many is the implication

because there are so many people who are driven to despair. And he's in smuggled in Britain. No, that's just very much like Britain. He smuggled in this ultra flat typewriter with a red ribbon, which he can hide. But in order to do this, they have to establish, they have to find a place that's safe from surveillance. And so they go, oh, dry man, he's like, you know, he's friends with Margot Hanukkah, he's like, he's probably one like a Stalin prize or whatever. You know, no one's going to bug his apartment, but just in case we'll test it.

And so the way they test it is they get very drunk and they arrange a radio play. They can't loudly discuss their criminal plans deliberately. It's great. They're like, oh, your cousin is helping smuggle my brother out of the country. He'll be stopping at this border crossing in a bright yellow Mercedes. The other thing is they're clearly having fun with it, like being able to speak out loud about like sedition in such a manner is so exciting that they just get really into it.

They find very good. And the vibe is that like, well, if this is Tazie R listing, then the car is going to get stopped, but there's not actually going to be anyone in it, so we find. Like, so they try to play a little trick here. Yeah, the false plan. And because the ultimate plan is that Draman is going to write this article about suicide and it will then be smuggled out and published in the West. It's the idea. And weaselah is of course listening to them. And he doesn't report this. I think he's the implication that he figures out that they're like trying to set him up. Or is it that like he's trying to do them a favor by not forcing it?

Oh, he literally calls the border post and like is about to report them. And he's like, oh no, there's one time I'm gonna let you get away with something. And my precious blog was, yeah, he makes the most to my mind suspicious thing you could possibly do. It's in his notes 7.32 pm.

No further incidents to report. I'm like, no, no, no, you do that one hour. You can't, you can't, you can't, you do it now, you do it too. Damn, Dave, you're good. I would have caught that, I'm just saying. You should work for the starsy. That's good, that's the, I would love to start that.

I'm working for the starsy, that's definitely not something that's already on that. And of course, to do the right thing avoids falling into this trap. And so they begin typing up this article. They keep Krista out of it. And they store this ultra flat type rice with the red ribbon, sort of under the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the sill of a door, the bit you walk on. So at this point, we, the reason I got this new sort of ultra flat typewriter is because the star is you can identify the brand of typewriter that somebody uses by looking at the font. And they know, they know all the writers at what brand of typewriter

they use. So if they have like an original copy of something, and they can know who wrote it. The reason why they know this is because in East Germany you had to register a typewriter. That is true. You have to have a license for it. Then again, every printer that you can buy, print, identifying micro dots on anything you print out of it. So... Really?

Yeah. This is a side note for anyone. That's why the printer refuses to print in black and white if you've got no yellow ink left. That's why it does it. It's because it needs to do an old lake side thing so that you can identify, oh yeah, that's right. So at this point, Vista was called back in by Groovitz and Groovitz, who has incidentally,

possibly the most cynical thing he says in this movie, he calls the thing between Prista and Hemp, a love story. And so we have an interest in making this love story happens, it's gonna make our careers. He calls them in. Vista is thinking about handing in his report that it's gonna expose a dryman. But.

Oh my God, I love this scene. What Groove and Staz is, he's got this job as like a thesis supervisor for the Staz he training is good. And he takes Vesla through his thesis for that he's supervising, which is about artists and dissident artists. And essentially, it is a way of destroying a person's ability to create art. Right? And the program is, you take your dissident artist, you keep them in solitary confinement for 10 months, you give them no human interaction whatsoever. You just let them go. It specifically says, do not beat them, do not like speak, don't even raise your voice,

they treat them so nicely, don't give them anything they can write about later. And then about 10 months, don't make it exact, but like, and definitely don't tell them when it's going to be. But then just arbitrary, arbitrarily release them. Yeah. Do nothing else. And he says that they will never make art again. This is like a universal prescription. He's like, you know, there are five types of artists. Yeah, he's doing it because the stars, he love to have typologies. Yeah. It's very telling. That's fair for free. What is the sort of hell punishment for podcasts? The stuff prevents podcasting. I'm sure we'll find out. So, and this is that this like so troubles Vistler that he refuses to do it. He refuses to turn

driving in. He refuses to destroy his ability to create art. Yeah, yeah. We just says, you know, I think we need to wind down the operation. Like, I've been spying on driving a fridge. He's not found anything. And Grimitz is kind of suspicious of this. He kind of smells a rat a little bit. He's like, all right, fine, whatever, I don't care. Just find something. find something. And it's too light because the article is then Julie written, it's published, it's smogged across the border and it's published. And we see that out, out maneuvering even hemp, we see grubits on the phone to a general who is like threatening to have him shot, having released this. And so this, this now becomes like priority number one. Oh my god, we get to find out who wrote this. Yeah, my favorite now becomes like priority number one.

Oh my God, we find out who wrote this favorite guy in the movie. We genuinely like typewriter got me like like typewriter guy. The typewriter guy is cool. Yeah. Typewriter guy. Like first of tenant who's like brought in to explain typewriters and groove. It's just like, I don't give this guy. I don't want to like draw stereotypes but this guy knows a lot about magic the gathering. He'll tell you about it in detail if you give him even the slightest rotate. Well, her lightning and his

job within the stage is to analyze like the typeface of the script and determine what typewriter produced this. And he does so. He knows exactly what kind of typewriter every art. He keeps getting quizzed on it. And it's like, obviously I use this like an Olympia Super. Yeah, he's so good. He's got like this big fuck is,

because he's doing a presentation, obviously, we're pre like OHP. So he's just got like a big piece of paper on an easel and is like pointing at it. It's fantastic. Yeah. It's so good. He said, I've been playing a lot of rim world recently. Listen, fuck off. So Groove, it's Cole's, Cole's visa about this while he's still in the attic and says,

you heard about this fucking article and Viesla who has been listening to Draman write it, goes, oh, yeah, of course. And Grews goes, where from? And Visa just throws up his hands. Like, fuck. Because he's just. He can catch the mistake immediately. They're like, I don't know about this article.

He's like, yes. And then immediately puts one hand, clenches it to his head. He's like, fuck, fuck. It's such a great, like, good luck. Yeah, it's cute. But he lies the house called driving a bowser. And at this point, hemp, who we saw in a sort of intercut thing while the two lovers were hugging each other, like alone, very alone in his hotel room, just wasting.

He calls Groot's group into his car and he's like, all right, listen, this is over now, I'm done with her. Here's where she gets her, like her barbature at sort of a, go on a raster and I, yeah. And he says, I never wanna see her on a German stage ever again. Yeah, he orders the police to end her career in this fucking terrifying scene. And she is arrested, she's taken in, Rubetz interrogates her, she offers... In one of those like illicit like camouflaged vans, it's like this, it's a fish van,

they're bread vans in real life. She offers to be an informant for Stasi She also it is implied like Offers to shag grubits and grubits like I'm sorry, you know You've made an enemy of a powerful person. Oh, that the fucking the first thing grubit says when she walks in as he says You had a great career. Oh Yeah, oh, God. Oh, he says it's insane.

You were really good. It's like, and he's talking to this woman who must be like, in her like 30s, 40s. It's an actress to be like, your career's over. It's just like, it's horrifying. It's so scary, specifically for me, but also in general. And you feel her like a loss of dignity and like, you don't, well, at least I didn't blame her

for betraying Dramas. No. Which is, which is, that's wrong, but I understand. Like, he's like offhandedly, oh, I don't suppose you know anything about like, who wrote this and she has seen him place the typewriter.

Yeah, this is the most Hollywood moment where he gets some sorry, there's nothing I can do. Unless. Unless. Yeah. So they let her out and he gives her some more pills because he says to be an informant, it has some privileges. Just try, try, try to, try to look surprised when, when we arrest him, you're an actress, you'll manage.

and they don't find the tie-brite because they don't look under the seal. The search sequence is so terrifying. It keeps cutting back to them stepping on this floorboard that we know conceals the tie-brite, and it creaks every time. And it's like, you feel the tension that this man is under. Also, they destroy the flat. They rip stuff apart. They cut the civer cushion over, and at the end, the guy in charge of it hands dryman like a ticket and says in the unlikely event that anything was damaged, you could claim compensation. And this is microbeat of like don't try. Yeah, this is like better and less heavy-handed than when the same joke is done in Brazil, right?

Because what dryman does is he looks at it for a second and he goes, I'm sure everything's fine. It's having seen the like slash open his couch cushions and up end all of his books and everything. And it's like, it's so much better as like a vulgar exercise of power. And we see, we see some of like the paranoia in this suspicion as well because Draman's friends and his like director and stuff like, look, Kristen must have turned you in. She's the rat and he goes

No, it can't be her because she knew where the typewriter was and they didn't find it So if it is her if she is a rat, she can't have told them everything. She must at least be on my side a little bit Yeah, so so grubots having found nothing now focuses and it sort of points the finger of suspicion at these And it's like okay, well you've been on this. And now with like no one else for God knows how long I think that you're up to something here. You have to interrogate Chris. Yeah, for me, you're still with us. Bye. Bye. He says evil. You still on the right side. So he calls we sit in and the meeting takes place in one of the interrogation rooms and the first thing

we see we see when he walks in is check if the like sent collecting cushion is on the chair. Yes, and I find that and it is not so he like is a little bit more at ease and then he is told that he is going to have to be the one who interrogates uh, Christa. And we get which, which a perfect mirrored shot. He is turned away from the door as she enters out of focus, and it is exactly the same shot composition as when she walks into the pub. Mm-hmm. It is perfect to me. It's a masterpiece to me. And, and he hits with what was after all the GDR's line

for this thing, which is the state has, it's nourished you since birth, it's given you everything, it's given you housing, it's given you employment, and now you have the opportunity to do something for the state in return. And- Dread and Sir Career, like, she says,

I made it all up dry man never wrote the article I just lied and he's like I don't believe you that's that's two years in prison for lying yeah, um, he says um, Dryman give your audience yeah, yeah, Dynapublic he says, Dryman will never know what you tell us you will instantly be released in fact what he says is him his opening line to her in this interrog is like, in seven and a half hours, the director of the theater that you're performing at will go out on stage and say that you are unable to perform for medical reasons. And this will

be the last that anyone in the acting world ever hears of your name. And that's his opening line. And I was like, fuck, Jesus Christ. And then he says says like, don't be a hero. You'd be surprised how many people are in this prison for unnecessary heroics. Yes, got it. I gotta be honest, this is the point of which like, I'm looking at my notes, I didn't make another note until like the final scene.

Like I just got caught and just watched the movie at this point. It's such a stage play. So good at this point. There's no violence. And no, like, you never threatens her. They never beat her. The stars, they are never shown like really, well, they kind of just risked me couch cushions.

But no one ever like pulls a gun and threatens anyone. It's all just like, don't you want to do this? Don't you want to do this? Otherwise, I'm going to do this horrible thing to you. It's all like the monopoly on violence, right? They don't have to threaten these people particularly hard. They don't have to do anything because everyone within a GDR is under complete knowledge that

these people have the capacity to ruin your life. They don't need to remember the start of a film. There's a little title card that that shows, you know, it says just how many people were in formance for the start scene. I remember seeing that, I mean, I got down, there's bastards, they must have really been horrible. What was wrong with people of East Germany, but the time we get to this scene, I'm like, fucking, fucking out, I can understand, like you don't condone it, but I'm like, Jesus, I understand why she betrays try and at the end of that. Yeah, 100%. What's really curious is, even in the popular memory of former East Germans, people didn't really know.

Like, they knew what the starsy was, they knew what it did. Even children knew that, but no one really knew the extent until they found the finals. And the fact that they were able to keep this so secret from so many people that like, in a nation where like maybe one in 50 people was collaborating and they all thought they were the only ones,

it makes you wonder about what we don't know about now, right? It makes you a little bit paranoid. As well it might do. So, because as we will get into later in this movie, different states, different systems, capitalist systems, communist systems, still has room for these exercises of power. First A and A stands for fall. So, so, so, so, Groobitz goes and goes to search the flat and he's like, oh, Vista's already laughed, that's weird, whatever.

He goes to search the flat. And I knew what was going to happen on this one. I knew it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure. But what's interesting is he has them search the whole room again, even though he's, you know, precisely what he's doing. He makes such a fucking show of it. He's purely out of say-dism.

He's like, huh, wait a second. This is do-o-so, it doesn't seem quite right to me. Just one more thing. Crazy. This door stops kind of squeaking. Let me just bend down and put some WDFullio and then, oh my goodness, it's coming off. Oh my god, could that be some sort of hidden compartment

in here? That's crazy. But if I just open this and meanwhile, like, Christa is like watching this makes perfect eye contact with Vistula and just like leaves, obviously. With Draman, Draman realizes that Christa betrayed him or thinks to us. And then she runs, she leaves the house in a bathroom.

And of course, Grewbitt's open sickling compartment and the typewriter is gone. Yeah. And there's no mystery to decipher. Because there's a scene earlier where we see Vistula remove it. And of course, Groobets, Urban Sickling, Department and the typewriter is gone. Yeah. And there's no mystery to do in Siver, because there's a scene earlier where we see the movie, so the remove it, like it's not. Yeah, we know that we know what's happening here.

But, uh, Christa is so distraught that she runs into the street. And it's sort of like, do you be as aware that how much this is intentional, that she gets hit by a truck and killed? And we see Vista was there to see it having like stashed the typewriter in his shitty little car and is horrified, dryman and grubits. Again, it's a play, right? Third act of the play, everyone rushes out to see

what's happened. And grubits in sort of like this uncharacteristic sort of like feeling some measure of pity or shame is like, well, it's over now. I don't, I don't. Sorry. In that manner, I don't see it as pity or shame at all. I think that in his estimations, if she has stolen and hidden the typewriter, she's taken that information to a grave, and there's nothing they can do at this point. Like, I don't think this is a sympathetic thing. I think this is just a, well, it's literally a dead end. Yeah. So it's now over.

Draman is left in the street with Christus Barding. Right. And yeah, they do like, say, do you want to speak to him and do what counts thing or anything? They're just like, all right, bye. We seem to have received a loan. What were the? Step off, goodbye. Yeah, We seem to have received an erroneous tip off goodbye.

Yeah, wait for the normal cops or whatever. So Vistula drives Grubit's home and Grubit's immediately knows what Vistula has done. And it's like, even if you're too smart to leave any trace of this, your career is over. You're going to be steaming open envelopes in a basement for the next 20 years. Yeah, what was that about? Well, the postal surveillance, which is as it looks, not a very

nice job because you have to steam open envelopes all day. It's like it's unpleasant. It's mean. It's sort of where you put the guys that you don't want ever advancing. It's like a dead end job for disgrace lads. Yes. and there's a lot of letters in the video. There's a detail. Yes, and there's a detail. The guy in the desk behind Veecillas is the guy who is telling the joke about Hornec. Oh, I didn't know that! Who misread the audience once again later on. I just got the name of that.

No, I think it's because of this. I think that's the joke. Yeah, oh, do you think it's because of that? Or do you think like, Groobits did that sort of in the background? Yeah, I think Groobits laughed it off, made another joke, and then reported it to me. I think that's what leaves that.

I totally believe that. I did the real thing, I think. The little jab. As he's told, you're gonna be in there for 20 years. 20 years, we look at the newspaper in the passenger seat seat and it's just like Mikhail Gorbachev as elected premier of Soviet Union. And in what is like a very sort of like a bit chile little exercise that I really like four years and seven months later. Yeah. They're the fucking the Berlin Wall comes down. Yeah, the Berlin Wall comes down and he like

and Vislah hits the bricks. He just a lot of wall comes down. he, like, and V-Sla hits the bricks. He just, the Berlin Wall comes down. He's like, you can go. Well, Starz is over. It's just Quark's driving out. So that's where our patient people and good things come to those who got. That's right. That's right. That's right.

So we now jump into the future. It's two years in the future. This is probably my favorite joke and the thing. We're watching the same play that we were watching at the start, but it's now being done with trendy modern theatre set. Yeah, it's pretty much the one that was there, more in like a fucking... It was socialist theatre, yeah. Yeah, that's really, really interesting. The first time we see the play, it's like set in a factory and there's like a proper set of people, like uniforms and like boxes and handling stuff. But then everyone's wearing like black

yeah, when we see it again, I think it's quite an interesting commentary on like, you know, the bourgeois art. When we see it again, it's very abstracted, like people are in blacks, like, there's no set, it's very, very plain. And it's just a night, especially with the reference to Brecht that we had earlier on. It's just a really, really nice sign that like, dry man's art has kind of been taken and it's people like it because it's about like the perils of East German communism. But it's been turned into something like soulless abstract thing and he can't even watch it. He storms out of the face. I think it's very well observed.

I wrote down. This is what well observed. I wrote down. This is not happens really that the West and to feel with your art. What happens is, it's not just the staging, he walks out because it's the monologue that Christa did in the first scene. And it's the moment where he, hemp and Viesla, were all looking at her.

And he's sort of like overcome by grief in that moment. And what's really, really interesting to me is he goes out to the lobby and he sees Hempf there who is also, and he's like, yeah, I couldn't face it either because however perversely and repatiously he loved her in his own imagination at least. And so, you know, he can't watch it either. And hemp, this scene with hemp is also really piping love this scene of him and pivot. Hemp, Hemp does not look any worse, right?

He looks still in the suit. Exactly the same, still in the suit. And he says, I hear you haven't written since the war came down. I get it in the federal republic. There's nothing to believe again, nothing to believe in, nothing to rebel against. And he launches into this sort of like now very familiar, like, nostalgia, like selling point of like our little republic.

You know, it was quaint, but it was nice. And we had these things and we had art. And Drone just looks at him with like this sort of unbounded contempt. And he says to think that people like you used to run a country. Yeah, it's really good. He uses it as like his moment because he goes like, look, you guys surveilled everyone I know. Why not me? And Hamph is like, oh bud, we were surveilling you nonstop. We knew every-

Check your lights, which is- Check your lights, which is. And we get this beautiful scene where he like, where, where, bucket dragon is just like pulling all of these wires out of his walls. And it's just like, what the fuck happened here? There's a curious thing with this scene with hemp, which is that I invented in my memory

and ending to it. Because I haven't seen this film in something like five years, at least. And the way I remembered it before rewatching was a little less subtle. I thought it ended with hemp getting into a Mercedes and sort of making the point more explicitly that like Oh no, all these guys are survivors. They did fine And it's not there. I made it up. It's all in my imagination Spiritually he gets into a spiritual Mercedes. Yeah, the spiritual was I love to have a spiritual Mercedes. Yeah, like ghost rider Yeah, this is really and this moment where dry man like pulls the bugs out of the walls and Like he realizes that he survived this but it was kind of This moment where Driman pulls the bugs out of the walls,

and he realizes that he survived this, but it was kind of arbitrary that he did. Feeling of being brushed by the wings of something. Yeah, yeah, well also, I don't really understand what it feels like to go through something like that, but I'm very much struck and plagued by survivors guilt from having survived what the NHS does the trans people in this country. Um, and to, to realize that you've interacted with this like horrific fucking system and gotten away with it and like survived, but it's arbitrary

that you did, that you did and other people didn't, it's, it's all sort of the handshake meme. One of the things that you can do with both the starzy and the NHS is request your file. And that's what and that's what dryman does. He goes to the the federal agency for a starzy record. This is to my mind. This is the funniest thing I can imagine. And I got a bad guy. Imagine how these james might not feel the same, but to go to the... This is the best-ing to be like, alright boys, what did you have? It's such an ending of like, end folders and like, yeah, we arranged this part. That's time. I'm sorry. That's basically the only joke in this movie.

Like, the only like flat joke in this movie is that like, oh, it's more than one file, so it might be a minute and he's clearly expecting like you know two files and a guy we lose in a car that's like piled high with files and he just goes respect. So it's so so so damn you must have been cool. Bro what the fuck? So he reads the files and he begins to piece it together and we see the extent to which Viesisa has been covering for him. The cover that Visa has made up is he's not writing an article, he's writing a play for the 40th anniversary of the GDR.

And they go and the stars, he sort of request more information. And Visa was left to ghost right. Yeah, this surveillance, this surveillance records to have this like, oh yeah, he said that this is what happens to act one of the player. This is what happens later on. Oh, he said, he says happens in act one of the players. Lenin is in constant danger. Yeah.

He continues with his revolutionary work. It's, it's so, so powerful. So sweet. He also finds Christus Confession and all the reports on him. Um, he, he discovers that we still was demoted. We still is never referred to by name, only by his code name. He's Hagevets Funseg Zeben, his code name.

HG-WX-77 in English. Yes. And also the final report of like, yeah, you know, Christopher Skild or whatever, by Weasler has read, has like a fingerprint in red ink. So he's like, oh my god, he took the tie right away. This is the guy that took the tie pride. Like he, he finally, in that moment, on his tansley goes over to a guy and he's like, all right, who the fuck was Haga,

the season seven? And like, something else that I think is maybe a little bit weird is that they just have a role of sex of everyone who worked for the stars. And he's like, uh, yeah, this guy hears his name and address. Yeah. To me. That's sort of a convenience. Yeah. Oh, fuck. God.

And then, and then in more, I already, Draman goes and surveils. Wiesler. He goes and like, grow goes to where he lives and like looks at him. Wiesler has, has like this terrible, menial job delivering junk mail. This is, this is something that I, I now want to get into sort of the way in which this movie is perceived by in particular former East German dissidents, they don't like it very much. It's kind of grown on them over time, but this is one of the reasons why, because okay, the reason why Vista has this terrible menial job is this because it's a morality play and he's being like punished for doing good, right? Inactuality, Stazzy officers did very, very well for

themselves out of reunification. Now, one of the few groups who did, like, I like, I like I like, I like, I like, I like, I like, I like, I like, I like, I like, I like, I like, I like, I like, I like, I like, I like, I like, I like, I like, I like, I like, I like, I like, I like, I like, I like, I like, I like, I like, I like, I like, I like, I like, I like, I like, I like, I like, I like, I like, I like, I like, I like, I like, I like, I like, I like, I like, I like, I like, I like, I like, I like, I like, I like, I like, I like, I like, I like, I like, I like, I like, I like, I like, I like, I like, I like, I like, I like, I like, I like, I like, I like, I like, I like, I like, I like, I like, I like, I like, I like, I like, I like, I like, I like, I like, I like, I like, I like, I like, I like, I like, I like, I like, I like, I like, I like, I like, I like, I like, I like, I like, I like, I like, I like, I like, I like, I like, I like, I like, I like, I like, I like, I like, I like, I like, I like, I like, I I can't overstate what an economic trauma reunification. Like 70% of East German women lost their job when the war came down.

Wow, really? Seven, wow. That's true. Because East Germany guaranteed equal pay for equal work and for employment for women and the West did not. So yeah, a lot of people did very poorly out of reunification and the federal public has sort of like addressed this in its own way, which is not very well. But Stasi, because they had these skills, because they knew how to work people, because they

had these connections, they were very heavily recruited by security companies, by a private detectives, but even things like real estate agents. There's increasingly, there's networks of former Stasi offices who like get together and have a drink about the good old days. And it's so weird. And so this is sort of like, I understand it as a dramatic conceit. It's not historical really.

Is it possible that we still deliberately refused to use jobs that would have utilized that's the skills. Is that kind of what it's saying? Here's the thing. What the director of Berlin's Hornschuhnhausen, the prison that's now a memorial centre that we see in the first scene, refused to let the director of this movie shoot there on the basis that you can't make a starzy officer into a moral hero.

And the director of this movie, Floddy and Hank Lufan Donzmark says, okay, well, what about like Shindler's list? And the guy goes, well, that's the thing. Oscar Shindler existed. There was no starzy agent like this. This never happened. We have the records for this.

We know in exacting detail everything they did, and it never happened. Not just because there were no opportunities too, because Starzy agents like worked in teams and were like surveilling each other all the time, but also just because they didn't want to. And it was, as an agency, it produced idealists in a way that they were able to like,

sort of like keep themselves contained in their idealism They didn't want to like do anyone any favors like this and so and that respect. It's really controversial Yeah, but yeah, I can see that I see that's a fat point But so he's doing this terrible meanial job also a couple of little details that I wanted to draw out as well in terms of like nostalgia nostalgia in the federal public and newly unified Berlin, we see unfamiliarly graffiti on the streets. Yes, that was an interesting task.

Homeless people on the streets. And we're like, oh wait a second, maybe this is not so uncomplicated deliberations we thought. It's not an unalloyed good. Yes, yeah. Whereas all the treats that we saw in East Germany completely clean. Yes.

No rubbish, no graffiti, no homelessness, just, I mean, because there was like full housing, right? I think. Yeah, oh yeah. Well, this is the house. It was the prison cell. Yeah, it was the house. It was full of bugs.

But you were given it. In every meaningful sense of the word. Yeah. It's a different conceptions of rights, I suppose. It's not true to say that the German Democratic Republic had no concept of human rights. It's just that those were collective rights. You didn't have a human right against the state because that was something entirely outside that conception of rights.

You had a right to housing, you had a right to a job, but you didn't have a right to privacy or you didn't have a right to freedom of speech because those were individual rights instead of collective ones. So Dreimann sees Vistula on the street and he's like unable to confront him. And so we get another jump forward in time, another two years. And dryman has written his first novel, the first thing he's written since, since reunification, which he is again called Sonata for a Good Man. And we see, obviously delivering his junk mail, his farm food leaflets or whatever, and just like stopping as he sees the giant window display.

In a bookshop on the Karl Marxale, which is another fucking piece of hauntology, it's the Karl Marx book handlung, which is real. And he goes in, he like thums through it and he sees the dedication, which is to Hagevi, it's fun to exeven to his codename with gratitude. And we get the perfect fucking line to end on, makes me cry every time. He buys the book and the guy goes, do you want a gift wrap?

And he says, no, it's for me. It's just a great, it's a great little sort of like joke. But I mean, to do the cry report, Devon cried two times during the course of this movie. I'm no, no, no, no, it is that Devon cried. It is a seven, then you won't be a Devon cry. That's one of these movies I've cried, I'll tell you that for you. You know what, actually, crying is a bit harsh.

I teared up twice, but the tears didn't go down my face. It's just, you were reabsorbed. Not the last time I'm gonna make you to watch a movie that's gonna try and get you to cry. I'll know, Devon might just call that's going to try and get you to cry. Oh no, don't make me spoil that. I said that. I didn't cry, but there were various points where I was like, oh, I was like, you know,

in a ball of stress. Um, partly that's because I had to take breaks from it to feel, it calls from my agent about the fucking shit. Yeah, I got it. So I was very much like in the zone with this one. Um, and my last note here says, it's amazing that the lesson we took from the fall of the Berlin Wall

and the exposure of the stars he was that communism is bad and not cops are bad. Cause a lot of this shit is like, what are they shit still fucking happens? It's the same shit. Well, I mean, it is a two-quake fallacy, right? But if you'll allow me to be fallacious,

we do be doing all this shit. That's the shimmy. Also. Don't write in, I know that was land, and I do speak land. In like the disclaimer, vice, I know it was land. And the thing is that the GDR has been very successful at sort of posthumously rehabilitating it.

Great cameras too. Very much. Yeah. No, I mean, I say this is sort of like an accessory to it, right? Like, you know, it is something that like has by reputation become one of the gentler communisms, right? Because they'd only destroy your ability to make art. They wouldn't kill you.

They wouldn't even hit you necessarily. And it's a small, weird, beautiful republic that contains such things as trebants and goodbye Lenin and Zon and Alley. And it's like, OK, true. It was all of those things. And people do feel nostalgic for it. And it did have universal housing. It was all of those things and people do feel nostalgic for it and it did have universal housing

it did have free healthcare and It perversely was better about trans rights than West Germany for a couple of years but it was also these things too and I think it's sort of a worthwhile tonic and I think even if you're sort of like worthwhile, Tonic, and I think even if you're sort of like a stasi records agency, guys, don't like it, I think it has has value for that. Yeah, I was also, I was quite touched by what it has to say about surveillance. So it's a useful reminder, I think that if you are surveilling someone and they do, if you're watching someone and they can't watch you, you necessarily have more power than them and therefore that is not an equal society. Like you might

say this is about equality, this about socialism, so everyone will be the same, we're just looking out for you. But if you are surveilling somebody, you are in a position of power over that person and there's just no getting around that. And it's, I think it's a powerful reminder of that because these sorts of justifications are still being used for police surveillance and heavy-handed policing today. Like all the time, like in London, I mean, isn't there a recent case that like the Met have just acknowledged their like violated somebody's human rights and like they're doing like facial recognition stuff and like stuff and search and stuff. And it's always like, where it's always sold as like, we're looking out for you

and we're protecting people and it's like, you're not though, are you? Because you're actually just the kind of fucking occupying force. What's really grim is that we don't even have a reason anymore. To do these things, these terrible things, because there are enemies of socialism, which undoubtedly the GDR had enemies, in order

to build communism, in order to build prosperity and happiness and peace and all this, we'd like barely even do lip service to any sort of capitalist ideals, whatever those might be. We're just sort of like around, and that's, it's like grim in a different way. Don't want disruptive protests because, yeah, they're noisy. It's great. Well, I wouldn't want anything to be noisy. I wouldn't want the end of the world to be noisy, would I? What does this movie say about masculinity, Linnah? Oh, no, no. I'm not a fucking, no. I'm not a fucking, no. The answer's a lot about creating a hot dog. Oh, dude. No, no, no, no.

It's not a lot about creating a hot dog. Oh, dude. No, no, no, no, no, no. I'm not a fucking, no. I'm not a fucking, no. I'm not a fucking, no. I'm not a fucking, no. I'm not a fucking, no.

I'm not a fucking, no. I'm not a fucking, no. I'm not a fucking, no. I'm not a fucking, no. I'm not a fucking, no. I'm not a fucking, no. I'm not a fucking, no. I'm not a fucking, no.

I'm not a fucking, no. I'm not a fucking, no. I'm not a fucking, no. I'm not a fucking, no. I'm not a fucking, no. I'm revolution. Oh, sorry. Sorry, he just made. I think it has interesting things to say about femininity, actually, especially with the guys like, Christus Carrera being more fragile than dry man because she is a woman. I think I thought that was very interesting. That's right. Well, so these are all like sort of male dominated environments. Yeah, no female starry ages.

Not that we see. Yeah. Well, that's a we see. Which is, yeah. That's the right delivery. Oh, yeah. But it's the enemy. You see one female star's the agent and that's it. And it's the last who is writing down the transcript of the interview between, but that's literally it. And she doesn't even, like her face isn't even on screen.

It's back of her head. So, Oh, great. She's not green as it was back of her head. So, Oh, great. She's not like an agent the way that we've been on. Of course, she sucks to know about her. Which is, yeah. So that's the lives of others, a little sort of three act morality stage play about East Germany and about surveillance and about parosociality. Whose turn is the next? Is it my turn?

I almost say Bodelein. I don't like that. Because if it is then I think I might choose equilibrium as a companion piece to this. Ooh, that's a good idea. A movie about how going off your meds is actually good for you and you should do it. You should take a question. Well I'm looking at the list. You picked Jennifer's body. Going off your meds is actually good for you and you should do you should take asked and Well, I'm looking at you pick Jennifer's body. Oh

Yeah, good point. It's that means you're just a spider, but I gotta be honest for you I I can't think of one so I'm happy to see twerk with a broom for now. You sure? Yeah, I'm more than happy Especially if it makes for a good companion piece to this 100% All right, well we will return with ano episode because I always respect and listen to women And the next mainline episode which will be the second man from Yeah, the movie from anyone hasn't remembered That's by with my face That's right I will

I will Fucking love I will have my spare time I will have my spare time I will have my spare time I fucking love you I can't wait There he is on the first level Just waiting to be get to the final 6 He's one that my brother wants to come up with Say goodbye to him Good-nob and leave a listener

And we will see you next time We will see you You won't see us Yeah, we will see you You can see you're looking great Let's know by the way. Woo! Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, kill James Bond. Next week on the free feed, The Spy with my face. We're having a lot of fun doing the silly ones on main, we can get away with doing quite cerebral and thoughtful bonuses.

So, considering that it's my pick after the next one, if you have any ideas, please let me know, because I love to listen. The audience on this one. Apparently, of course, you don't have to be a subscriber to get the full gamut of content we are creating and producing over winter, going to... how much it sucks to be alive in England right now. It's very expensive and it's not even very good. So at least we can do. right now. It's very expensive and it's not even very good. So at least we can do. Is give you one podcast a week. But we do still have some patrons now be remiss to not thank our 15 pounds above patrons and those are Christine Fox, Amanda Comet, Fox Winchester, Gustavo Lyra, Jack Holmes, paintmachala, Thomas Oberhard, Nick Boris, Yarrick, Nate Maury, Harriet DeGoc, Corius, the Commissar, formerly known as Jen, Library Hitman, Beef Crime, Beno Rice, Jonathan Gurdys,

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