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"The Lives of Others"

On the Oscar Campaign Trail

By Lars-Olav Beier

German director Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck's film "The Lives of Others" didn't make it to the Berlin International Film Festival last year -- but now it's been nominated for an Oscar.

The wind coming across the East River is bitingly cold. On the other side of the water, the Manhattan skyline glistens in the setting sun like an icy palace. It's one of the coldest days of this year's New York winter.

But German film director Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck is giving an outdoor interview, shrouded in frosty breath. It looks as if this six-foot-nine-inch giant will turn to ice any moment. Instead, he laughs. And it works: He's making a great impression.

Donnersmarck is hoping to win an Oscar for his melodrama about the East German secret police, "The Lives of Others" ("Das Leben der Anderen"), which is competing in the category "Best Foreign Language Film." The much sought-after awards will be presented in Los Angeles on Feb. 25. Meanwhile, the film is showing in many major US cities, where it now needs to impress the members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences who make up the jury. Donnersmarck's expectations are climbing.

He's travelling around ahead of his film, from New York to Los Angeles via Chicago and Dallas. "When no one knows you," Donnersmarck says, "you have to take your film to the people."

And his name is becoming more and more known. Never before has a German director achieved such success with his debut film. "The Lives of Others" was seen by 1.7 million people in Germany. It won "Best Film" at the 2006 European Film Awards and has been sold to about 30 countries.

"But it was a damned hard road," says Donnersmark, who spent more than five years working on the film. He gingerly warms his stiff fingers around a cup of tea, knowing the road isn't quite over yet. The Golden Globe Awards -- where he lost against Clint Eastwood's film "Letters from Iwo Jima" -- was just one leg of the race. Now it's all about that little golden statue -- the Oscar.

Here in New York, Donnersmarck is giving more than 20 interviews a day. During his trip to the National Board of Review, his assistant passes him a mobile phone so he can talk to someone from the Museum of Modern Art. His film will be archived there, as will this telephone conversation -- the East German dictatorship is an exotic topic. Donnersmark quickly utters a few remarks for the record.

Sony Classics has organized a presentation of the film that evening. Theatre great Robert Wilson is there, as is film director Arthur Penn ("Bonnie and Clyde"). Penn is about to leave for Berlin, where the International Film Festival has organized an homage to him. He knows the city well: In the mid-1980s, he filmed his spy thriller "Target" there.

Donnersmarck's film, which is set in 1984, is a kind of déjà vu experience for 84-year-old Penn: "The emptiness and the cold, the paranoia I felt during my visit to East Berlin at the time are perfectly captured by the film. It turns communism, which is an abstract concept for us Americans, into an intense experience."

Meeting celebrities

Donnersmarck is standing next to Penn, who is more than a foot shorter than him. The German director is delighted to be meeting the cinematic legend as an equal. "This is the most wonderful way of meeting a city's celebrities," Donnersmarck says.

His father was a manager for German aviation company Lufthansa in the United States. There were always plenty of artists in the home. "But I wanted to earn the right to meet these people, to be able to speak to them as an artist myself," he says.

Donnersmarck comes from an old aristocratic family and sees himself as part of a "tradition of achievers." Failure was never an option. When German director Tom Tykwer achieved success with his third film "Run Lola Run," he couldn't believe what was happening. Donnersmarck, on the other hand, is enjoying his harvest of awards, the brilliant box office results and the praise he's receiving from critics -- but none of it really seems to surprise or even overwhelm him.

Is a dream coming true for him? Not necessarily, he replies, adding that he doesn't chase after dreams: He sets himself goals, some of which he's now achieved. Sometimes this kind of self-confidence is hard to bear. But that's probably just how you feel when you physically tower above almost everyone you meet and carry a name so long it takes up the whole screen during the credits.

He brings three tuxedos with him to a photo shoot in a bar at Grand Central Station. He's used to wearing evening dress, he says. "It's nothing unusual for me. I'm not the typical young director." That's pretty bold for a newcomer -- even for one who's just landed a box-office success. But that kind of bold statement probably comes with the territory.

He checks his emails on the way back to the hotel. A new one arrives every five minutes. The film has just started showing in France, and the first box-office figures are in. This weekend the number of tickets sold could be as high as 100,000. "If there is any justice, this year's Academy Award for best foreign-language film will go to 'The Lives of Others,'" wrote respected film critic Anthony Lane in the New Yorker magazine.

No consensus

In Germany, some critics wrote "The Lives of Others" off as a film that just repackages what everyone thinks anyway: a so-called "consensus film." Donnersmarck is still offended by this judgement -- and you can tell. "That accusation is completely absurd," he blurts out. He talks himself into a rage: "On the contrary, our film doesn't have enough of a consensus yet! The consensus I strive for is a film that everyone likes, one no one can criticize."

He pauses. Does that sound presumptuous? Or opportunistic? He laughs, and then he lets his gaze roam through the Metropolitan Museum's Sackler Wing, where an Egyptian temple is on display. "That's luxury," he gushes. "Luxury begins where necessity ends."

German film-making, Donnersmarck says, is characterized by constant cost-cutting and the incessant question "Do we really need that?" That's often the wrong question, he adds. If he so chooses, he won't have to ask it anymore in the future, since Hollywood studios are currently swamping him with lucrative offers. He's already got an entire shelf full of scripts at home. All he has to do is pick one out. But does he really want to film other people's stories? Wouldn't it be better to film his own?

One reason "The Lives of Others" is such a success in the United States is that critics see it as part of a US cinematic tradition, something akin to paranoia thrillers like Francis Ford Coppola's "The Conversation" (1974) or Alan J. Pakula's "All the President's Men" (1976).

Donnersmarck's film, which tells the story of a how a young artistic couple (played by Sebastian Koch and Martina Gedeck) is spied on by an agent of East Germany's Stasi secret police (Ulrich Mühe), doesn't seem all that exotic to US audiences. At one showing, an audience member stands up and says: "The surveillance state you describe in your film may be a thing of the past for you; for us, it's the present."

Donnersmarck reacts sensibly, qualifying comparisons between the former East Germany and the United States under the Bush administration. He tells the story of how his mother, who came from Magdeburg in East Germany, was subjected to humiliating body searches at the border between the two German states. But then, before boarding his plane to Boston, he's sent through the metal detector twice himself. He hates having to take off his shoes. Now he has to. For a fraction of a second, the condescending manner of the security personnel is reminiscent of the uniformed characters in his film.

But Donnersmarck remains relaxed. He knows how to showcase and sell himself. He paces into the TV studio, takes a seat and then explains what the Stasi was in a few concise sentences. He tells the story of how the secret police removed some saucers from a dissident's kitchen in order to make him doubt his own sanity.

Journalists keep asking him what he thinks his chances of winning an Oscar look like, and whether he thinks he can improve those chances by going on this public relations tour. No, he replies, the Academy members have all won their film-making credentials, and it will take more to impress them than just some large ads. The Academy will be pleased to hear him say this -- and the statement will certainly not lower his chances of winning.

Odd one out

Of course Sony Classics has deliberately placed the opening date of the film two weeks before the Oscar ceremony, and of course reviews and box office results influence the Academy's opinion. Donnersmarck is on an electoral campaign, whether he likes it or not. After all, an Oscar translates into millions of dollars at the box office.

But "The Lives of Others" is clearly the odd one out in the lists of Oscar contenders. "Pan's Labyrinth" (which opened in Germany on Feb. 22), a haunting blend of fairy tale and horror film directed by Mexican director Guillermo del Toro, has already been nominated six times and is widely considered the number-one contender for the foreign-language prize.

"Whatever," Donnersmarck says. "Seeing that I'm here anyway, I want to take the Oscar home with me." He glances out the car window at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington -- where Forrest Gump began his outsider's race.

Donnersmarck jumps out of the car, walks into the Washington branch of the Goethe Institute and positions himself in front of his audience. An elderly man asks him whether he could imagine making a film about the early years of the German Democratic Republic, when the socialist state still presented itself as a utopian promise. Donnersmarck thinks about his answer for a long time, kneading the microphone. Then he finally replies: "I think this chapter is finished for me."

Then it's into the limo and off to the hotel. It's just before midnight. The next interview is scheduled for 8:45 a.m. next morning, one of 20 as usual. Donnersmarck looks at his schedule and says: "What I'm experiencing now is really great. But I'll be glad when all the fuss is over."