The Lives of Others

Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck is a German Film Director who has worked on several short films before this movie. The Lives of Others is the first film that Donnersmarck had written, directed and won an oscar in 2006 for being the best foreign-language film. This film works in Germany, around 1984, while Germany was still split into 2 parts; East Germany and West Germany. The film depicts how the environment was like in Germany at this point of time and how one side is better than the other war continued. It’s a powerful but quiet film filled with hidden thoughts and secret desires. Wiesler was first shown giving a lecture of investigation to a group of college students before being asked to come and join the Stasi for an investigation.…

When an individual’s assumptions are challenged by significant discoveries, their lives are often transformed. This perspective is represented throughout Ernesto Che Guevara’s eclectic memoir, The Motorcycle Diaries, which details his arguably metamorphic journey through Latin America in the early 1950s and the diverse discoveries he makes, which are personal and political in their nature. Guevara’s varied and confronting encounters throughout his travels challenge his preconceived views of…

The Introduction and the first chapter of the Riis’s book “How the Other Lives”, seem to vividly depict drastic changes in New York City’s demographic structure, which happened during the vast immigration wave of 1880’s. His photograph projections intrigued and shocked the opulent class, since it was not aware of the struggles of those underneath. Riis’s life’s work has only gained in relevance as the time was passing, since overcrowded tenements persisted in modified forms and shapes to this…

Jacob Riis was a Danish born immigrant that arrived to the United States in 1870. As a police reporter, Riis used his interest in tenement life and knowledge of photography to attempt to bring about social change for the impoverished of New York. His crusade against poverty culminated in the publication of his work How the Other Half Lives, in which Riis presents a thorough analysis of the problems faced by the poor of New York as a result of urban expansion, rapid industrialization and…

It was like any other day; basketball warm ups, a few sprints, rehydration, and everyone gathering around in a circle to start the game. This game wasn’t like every other game, we had a different coach sitting on the bench. We put our heads together and tried to play the game we love, but we looked like baby deer learning how to walk. We were so uncoordinated and confused. My team and I were left with so many question and such little reasoning. As we packed up our bags, you could feel the…

How do we know if something has the quality of being true? We usually rely on our own experiences or the experiences of others. We rely on what we can see, smell, hear, taste or touch. We use our five senses to perceive something as real, to a certain extent, but our thoughts, our beliefs, and our personal experiences usually tend to come between reality and the actual truth. We usually ask questions or people for advice and we tend to believe what others tell us. To what extent do we have to…

The Lives of Others The movie begins with a scene of the ongoing process of an interrogation that turned out to be a lecture given by Captain Gerd Wiesler. This scene introduced background of the era that was portrayed in the movie. The movie took place in East Germany during the 1980s where Stasi government was in control. In this Stasi government, there was minimal or no personal liberty. The suspect was not allowed to sleep throughout the integration, which took place for 40 hours because…

In "Miss Brill" by Katherine Mansfield, an elderly woman describes how she feels and what she sees as she visits Seaside Park on a Sunday afternoon for her weekly ritual. Miss Brill portrays a lonely, elderly English school teacher who would like a different reality from the one she lives in. Miss Brill attends Seaside Park as an escape from her reality and to feel as a part of society. Miss Brill time is only taken up by her trips to the park and her 5th grade students. Mansfield shows the…

help each other so they can help the country and the government grow. But the problem was that these people were alien to each other and it was not really easy for them to get along. Also after the wall, there was a lot of economic issues that they were facing. A lot of people were unemployed and were struggling to stand on their feet. Two movies that focused on these issues were The Lives of Others and Jerichow. The Live of Others started in the year 1984, before the unification. The movie is…

The film “The Lives of Others” can be approached by two ethical frameworks. The ethical frameworks that can be examined to understand these situations more thoroughly are the theories of utilitarianism and egoism. To lay the ground base, utilitarianism is an ethical theory that states than an individual should do not what is best for himself, but rather for the greater of the group. In the movie, a Stasi agent employs a utilitarian position in how his work life unfolds. On the other hand, egoism…