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Comment by sowbug | Hacker News Reader

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lives_of_Others if you don't personally have that memory but would like to understand it.

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While this is a good movie, one should be aware that it does not reflect the reality in Eastern Germany all that well. It's not a documentary.

In preparation for the film, the director asked Christoph Hein, an Eastern German writer, to describe the typical life of a writer in Eastern Germany (which is what the film is about). At the premiere, Hein's name was included in the opening credits, but he asked to have it removed, because he couldn't see his story in the film. He described the film as being more of a dark fairy tale than a depiction of life in 80s Eastern Germany.

>he couldn't see his story in the film ...

Published comments, just last month. In German -- would any bilinguals care to summarize?

https://www.sueddeutsche.de/kultur/donnersmarck-hein-das-leb...

He describes the movie as an overly dramatic dark fairy tale and says he doesn't recognize himself in the main character. As far as specific criticism goes, he says the way the main character has to write in secrecy and is suppressed by the Stasi is inaccurate. He says his room was bugged in the 60s but the 80s in the DDR were supposedly much more liberal than what the film shows.

I read only the automatic Google translation to English, so this might be a misreading, but he does seem to recognize that he was being a little too pedantic in expecting historical accuracy in a dramatic work.

A friend recommended it to understand why people in certain areas of the world feel more strongly about mass surveillance. For that purpose it's a good movie -- not because of its historical accuracy, but because of its plausibility. The motivations of the characters were straightforward, and the technology unremarkable. No psychos or unobtanium needed.

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