Tag Archives: Berlin

Line(s) of the Day #WeDidn’tStartheFire

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We didn't start the fire

Harry Truman, Doris Day, Red China, Johnny Ray
South Pacific, Walter Winchell, Joe DiMaggio
Joe McCarthy, Richard Nixon, Studebaker, Television
North Korea, South Korea, Marilyn Monroe

Rosenberg’s H-Bomb, Sugar Ray, Panmunjom
Brando, The King And I, and The Catcher In The Rye
Eisenhower, Vaccine, England’s got a new queen
Marciano, Liberace, Santayana goodbye

Joseph Stalin, Malenkov, Nasser and Prokofiev
Rockefeller, Campanella, Communist Bloc
Roy Cohn, Juan Peron, Toscanini, Dacron
Dien Bien Phu Falls, Rock Around the Clock
Einstein, James Dean, Brooklyn’s got a winning team
Davy Crockett, Peter Pan, Elvis Presley, Disneyland
Bardot, Budapest, Alabama, Khrushchev
Princess Grace, Peyton Place, Trouble in the Suez

Little Rock, Pasternak, Mickey Mantle, Kerouac
Sputnik, Chou En-Lai, Bridge On The River Kwai
Lebanon, Charles de Gaulle, California baseball
Starkweather Homicide, Children of Thalidomide…

Buddy Holly, Ben-Hur, Space Monkey, Mafia
Hula Hoops, Castro, Edsel is a no-go
U2, Syngman Rhee, payola and Kennedy
Chubby Checker, Psycho, Belgians in the Congo

Hemingway, Eichmann, Stranger in a Strange Land
Dylan, Berlin, Bay of Pigs invasion
Lawrence of Arabia, British Beatlemania
Ole Miss, John Glenn, Liston beats Patterson

Pope Paul, Malcolm X, British Politician sex
J.F.K. blown away, what else do I have to say

Birth control, Ho Chi Minh, Richard Nixon back again
Moonshot, Woodstock, Watergate, punk rock
Begin, Reagan, Palestine, Terror on the airline
Ayatollah’s in Iran, Russians in Afghanistan
Wheel of Fortune, Sally Ride, heavy metal, suicide
Foreign debts, homeless Vets, AIDS, Crack, Bernie Goetz
Hypodermics on the shore, China’s under martial law
Rock and Roll, cola wars, I can’t take it anymore.

The verses from the song ‘We Didn’t Start the Fire’ which lists notable and notorious people, places and events from the years 1949 – 1989. It was taken from the album ‘Storm Front (1989) by Billy Joel.

Foreign Favourites Series: Das Leben Des Anderen (2006)

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I’ve been delighted at the way my Foreign Favourites series has taken off, and the great standard that has been set by everyone so far. Today’s entry is the very cool Abbi at Where the Wild Things Are, whose site has a neat mix of film reviews and quirky top 10 lists, and sharing delicious recipes (and photos) and writing projects. I’ve been a fan of her site for quite a while now.

The Lives of Others film poster

Das Leben ders Anderen – The Lives of Others (2006)

It’s East Berlin in 1984 and Stasi Agent Wiesler (Ulrich Mühe) is a skilled interrogator and dedicated member of the Secret Police, who not only works and an investigator but also trains new agents.

After attending the theatre with his friend and more senior colleague, Oberstleutnant Anton Grubitz (Ulrich Tukur), Wiesler suggests that the writer of the play, Georg Dreyman (Sebastian Koch) might be someone they should keep an eye on – a sentiment shared by Grubitz’s boss, Minister Bruno Hempf (Thomas Thieme), who happens to want Dreyman’s beautiful actress girlfriend, Christa-Maria (Martina Gedeck) for himself.

Grubitz puts Wiesler on the case and he sets about bugging Dreyman and Christa-Maria’s flat and spending his days and nights listening in on them and their artist friends, because surely if the Minster thinks that Dreyman is up to something, he must be. But as Wiesler starts to uncover the real motivations for the Minister’s scrutiny and becomes ever more fascinated with Dreyman he starts to question himself and his motivations, leading him down a road that will ultimately put all of their lives in jeopardy… because in a country where Big Brother is always watching, anyone could be an enemy of the state.

Wiesler knew it was essential to the GDR's survival to get citizens on board young, but this new partner was a joke!

Wiesler knew it was essential to the GDR’s survival to get citizens on board young, but this new partner was a joke!

There has been a lot of positive buzz around this German thriller since it came out and I have to say that I completely agree with it. Not only are Wiesler, Dreyman and Christa-Maria complex and well-developed characters that it’s easy to become invested in, but Wiesler’s crisis of conscience and confidence in the system he has believed in unquestioningly is an awakening anyone can identify with. Mühe gives a skilled and subtle performance playing a character with such a range of emotions as he has extremely limited dialogue and both Koch and Gedeck are more than competent.

Writer/director, Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck does an outstanding job of creating a bleak, muted colour palette that reflects the constraints that the GDR places on its residents, preventing them from exploring their creativity and uniqueness which makes it even more impressive The Lives of Others has some seriously nail-biting moments, which kept me at the edge of my seat for its 137 minute run time.

Very highly recommended. 5/5

My thanks to Abbi for such a good review. I saw it when it came out at the cinema and echo her thoughts. It really is a magnificent film and a great selection for the series.