How did you feel about the ending? I found it completely satisfying and terribly moving. (OK, so I liked the movie a lot.) But others have found it too maudlin. Did it strike the right balance for you?
I found it very moving, too. I can see an argument that it was a tad contrived, and the sequence of "2 years later" was a bit odd (though necessary, I think), but it all worked. It was an effective resolution to the story.
To me, it posed a central question: Is it worse — in an artistic creation — for a bad man to go unpunished (as the minister did) or for a good man to go unrecognized? I mentioned in an earlier comment that I could accept the minister getting off Scott free, but I don't know whether I could have accepted Wiesler's good deed going unacknowledged. Do you guys have any thoughts on this?
I would have found it too maudlin had Dreyman approached Wiesler after tailing him. It was interesting that he chose instead to back away. Maybe it was too much to meet a man who knew his deepest secrets and private moments from a long period of surveillance. The author's acknowledgment was a satisfying ending.
I actually thought the movie would end sooner -- kc said she thought so initially after Christa-Maria's suicide, and that seems about right. Instead the film followed through to a full resolution.
After the suicide, I became a little impatient for the end. When Dreyman requests his files, the scene shows the request, the clerk going to retrieve his records, wheeling them in to him -- a minor point, but probably a half-minute of film that could edited out. There were probably more moments like that, that didn't develop a character or the plot, or build suspense -- that could have been trimmed from the story. Then again, we wrapped up the film at nearly 11 p.m., so this Cinema Chattee was getting sleepy.
Oh, and you know what else I would have liked? This could relate to either this thread or those about the characters ... I wish Christa-Maria had made her choice without the crutch of a drug habit. Maybe the idea was to keep the audience sympathetic, but it would have been a more complex choice for her to betray Dreyman based on the fear and hopelessness the government spelled out for her. As a plot device, it gave them a reason to arrest her, but don't you get the feeling they could have invented any reason they wished? They were ready to search Dreyman, so why fear his reaction? I would have liked to see the pressure play upon her original fears of never acting again, of ending up like Jerska, rather than to expose her vulnerability to a drug. (She appeared to be going through withdrawal systems during her detainment.)
I would have still sympathized with her, weakening under that kind of pressure.
What kind of drugs were they? I assumed some kind of numbing agent, some type of sedative like valium, but perhaps it was something more necessary to her well-being? You're right, cl, that it did seem to complicate the scenario, perhaps needlessly.
She seemed to have a fragile ego and a HUGE need to feel admired/loved/looked at/appreciated. Her self-esteem issue was clearly her Achilles heel.
Ok, did you all take Christa’s death to be suicide? I’m glad I didn’t since that would make an awkward scene worse. I thought that she ran from the building in such self-absorbed anguish that she didn’t even know that she was on the street. Did she look at the truck with any comprehension? Suicide would be too pat for me with both a prior artist suicide and a rebellious article about suicide.
As it was, the scene was a bit maudlin. Knocking off Christa was a bit much as a plot device. But I think it would have worked better if she was dead before either Wiesler or Dreyman got there.
However, since the film did resort to this tactic, the ending did make very good use of it. The whole bookstore scene was very poised down to the title of the book and the dedication. Just the right note.
I understood her death to be a suicide, but, as I told cl, it was weird that there was no other traffic on the street after the truck that hit her. I mean, you could easily plan to kill yourself on a busy street, but how is it that a truck goes by on a seemingly quiet street just as you're ready to do thedeed? Weird coincidence? I thought she had a sort of knowing look on her face, like there was a second of resolve: Oh a truck. I'll just end it here.
I think she was looking out the window before she went outside. Whether she was contemplating escape in a bathrobe or suicide, I couldn't say. She also presumably was under the influence, since the government had given her the pills back and she wasn't exhibiting the withdrawal symptoms from earlier.
I thought it was clearly not a suicide, but I may have missed something. If I saw it correctly, she didn't look toward the truck before running out into the street, and she had a shocked look on her face when she turned and saw it.
I didn't find the ending to be maudlin (but I'm probably more a fan of maudlin than the rest of you) but there were a couple of details that bothered me.
One was that I thought the use of the code name implied that he wanted to keep the identity secret, but it wouldn't have been secret, since anyone could look up the code. I mentioned this to Erin, and she said that he didn't intend for the identity to be a secret. But I saw no other reason for him not to use the real name.
The other thing that I didn't like was the main character (sorry, I'm bad with names) ending up as a mail carrier. With his brilliance, moral strength, and work ethic, I wanted to see him doing something more important (sorry, kc, I know you want to be a mail carrier). But I get the artistic value of where he ended up.
The fact that the big guy wasn't punished didn't really bother me. I mean, I'd have liked to see him punished, but if he had been, it would have seemed contrived.
Ben, agreed it would have been right for Wiesler to have flourished despite the corruption and the minister of culture to be punished. Since there's some discussion of whether the storyline felt realistic, I think either idea would have compromised the point.
Perhaps I haven't restudied the history on this point, but I could surmise the Minister of Culture cutting some deals and saving his own skin, making him immune to history's ministrations. That, to me, made the film more realistic, if less satisfying.
Ben, I think there were good reasons that the book was dedicated as it was. Dreyman never knew Wiesler as a person; their only interaction was via Wiesler’s job. And the book was not just written for Wiesler to read but was a public acknowledgement of a good deed from a person easily assumed to be bad. The public wouldn’t know Wiesler either, but they would know about Stasi agents.
I agree with Cl. A theme of this movie is that the world is indifferent: good is not rewarded, bad is not punished. To this is added the somewhat romantic idea that what matters is individual deeds undertaken by those with sympathetic understanding and the courage of their convictions.
Take your two points together, and you have the very romantic idea that what matters is individual good deeds with no extrinsic rewards nor any expectation of them.
Yes. And one reason that I find the premise of this movie problematic is that that sort of romanticism is not what brought down the Berlin Wall. This is a thoroughly apolitical film set in a highly political time and place.
I enjoyed that Wiesler ended up as a mail carrier. We sort of take it as a given that Wiesler was the loser in this story, that he wasn't rewarded for doing the right thing. But I wonder whether Wiesler was actually so disillusioned with the Stasi and his former career that this was not necessarily an unhappy ending for him. I loved the book store scene and the last line, "No, it's for me."
How did you feel about the ending? I found it completely satisfying and terribly moving. (OK, so I liked the movie a lot.) But others have found it too maudlin. Did it strike the right balance for you?
18 comments:
I found it very moving, too. I can see an argument that it was a tad contrived, and the sequence of "2 years later" was a bit odd (though necessary, I think), but it all worked. It was an effective resolution to the story.
To me, it posed a central question: Is it worse — in an artistic creation — for a bad man to go unpunished (as the minister did) or for a good man to go unrecognized? I mentioned in an earlier comment that I could accept the minister getting off Scott free, but I don't know whether I could have accepted Wiesler's good deed going unacknowledged. Do you guys have any thoughts on this?
I would have found it too maudlin had Dreyman approached Wiesler after tailing him. It was interesting that he chose instead to back away. Maybe it was too much to meet a man who knew his deepest secrets and private moments from a long period of surveillance. The author's acknowledgment was a satisfying ending.
I actually thought the movie would end sooner -- kc said she thought so initially after Christa-Maria's suicide, and that seems about right. Instead the film followed through to a full resolution.
After the suicide, I became a little impatient for the end. When Dreyman requests his files, the scene shows the request, the clerk going to retrieve his records, wheeling them in to him -- a minor point, but probably a half-minute of film that could edited out. There were probably more moments like that, that didn't develop a character or the plot, or build suspense -- that could have been trimmed from the story. Then again, we wrapped up the film at nearly 11 p.m., so this Cinema Chattee was getting sleepy.
Should have had some of kc's coffee. Again, an outstanding film. I gave it a 9, but maybe it's a 10. They need half-points on FilmAffinity.
Oh, and you know what else I would have liked? This could relate to either this thread or those about the characters ... I wish Christa-Maria had made her choice without the crutch of a drug habit. Maybe the idea was to keep the audience sympathetic, but it would have been a more complex choice for her to betray Dreyman based on the fear and hopelessness the government spelled out for her. As a plot device, it gave them a reason to arrest her, but don't you get the feeling they could have invented any reason they wished? They were ready to search Dreyman, so why fear his reaction? I would have liked to see the pressure play upon her original fears of never acting again, of ending up like Jerska, rather than to expose her vulnerability to a drug. (She appeared to be going through withdrawal systems during her detainment.)
I would have still sympathized with her, weakening under that kind of pressure.
What kind of drugs were they? I assumed some kind of numbing agent, some type of sedative like valium, but perhaps it was something more necessary to her well-being? You're right, cl, that it did seem to complicate the scenario, perhaps needlessly.
She seemed to have a fragile ego and a HUGE need to feel admired/loved/looked at/appreciated. Her self-esteem issue was clearly her Achilles heel.
Ok, did you all take Christa’s death to be suicide? I’m glad I didn’t since that would make an awkward scene worse. I thought that she ran from the building in such self-absorbed anguish that she didn’t even know that she was on the street. Did she look at the truck with any comprehension? Suicide would be too pat for me with both a prior artist suicide and a rebellious article about suicide.
As it was, the scene was a bit maudlin. Knocking off Christa was a bit much as a plot device. But I think it would have worked better if she was dead before either Wiesler or Dreyman got there.
However, since the film did resort to this tactic, the ending did make very good use of it. The whole bookstore scene was very poised down to the title of the book and the dedication. Just the right note.
I understood her death to be a suicide, but, as I told cl, it was weird that there was no other traffic on the street after the truck that hit her. I mean, you could easily plan to kill yourself on a busy street, but how is it that a truck goes by on a seemingly quiet street just as you're ready to do thedeed? Weird coincidence? I thought she had a sort of knowing look on her face, like there was a second of resolve: Oh a truck. I'll just end it here.
I think she was looking out the window before she went outside. Whether she was contemplating escape in a bathrobe or suicide, I couldn't say. She also presumably was under the influence, since the government had given her the pills back and she wasn't exhibiting the withdrawal symptoms from earlier.
I thought it was clearly not a suicide, but I may have missed something. If I saw it correctly, she didn't look toward the truck before running out into the street, and she had a shocked look on her face when she turned and saw it.
I didn't find the ending to be maudlin (but I'm probably more a fan of maudlin than the rest of you) but there were a couple of details that bothered me.
One was that I thought the use of the code name implied that he wanted to keep the identity secret, but it wouldn't have been secret, since anyone could look up the code. I mentioned this to Erin, and she said that he didn't intend for the identity to be a secret. But I saw no other reason for him not to use the real name.
The other thing that I didn't like was the main character (sorry, I'm bad with names) ending up as a mail carrier. With his brilliance, moral strength, and work ethic, I wanted to see him doing something more important (sorry, kc, I know you want to be a mail carrier). But I get the artistic value of where he ended up.
The fact that the big guy wasn't punished didn't really bother me. I mean, I'd have liked to see him punished, but if he had been, it would have seemed contrived.
Ben, agreed it would have been right for Wiesler to have flourished despite the corruption and the minister of culture to be punished. Since there's some discussion of whether the storyline felt realistic, I think either idea would have compromised the point.
Perhaps I haven't restudied the history on this point, but I could surmise the Minister of Culture cutting some deals and saving his own skin, making him immune to history's ministrations. That, to me, made the film more realistic, if less satisfying.
Ben, I think there were good reasons that the book was dedicated as it was. Dreyman never knew Wiesler as a person; their only interaction was via Wiesler’s job. And the book was not just written for Wiesler to read but was a public acknowledgement of a good deed from a person easily assumed to be bad. The public wouldn’t know Wiesler either, but they would know about Stasi agents.
I agree with Cl. A theme of this movie is that the world is indifferent: good is not rewarded, bad is not punished. To this is added the somewhat romantic idea that what matters is individual deeds undertaken by those with sympathetic understanding and the courage of their convictions.
Take your two points together, and you have the very romantic idea that what matters is individual good deeds with no extrinsic rewards nor any expectation of them.
Yes. And one reason that I find the premise of this movie problematic is that that sort of romanticism is not what brought down the Berlin Wall. This is a thoroughly apolitical film set in a highly political time and place.
Ah, but real-life politics are so unromantic! Who wants to see a movie about politics? (I mean besides you.)
I enjoyed that Wiesler ended up as a mail carrier. We sort of take it as a given that Wiesler was the loser in this story, that he wasn't rewarded for doing the right thing. But I wonder whether Wiesler was actually so disillusioned with the Stasi and his former career that this was not necessarily an unhappy ending for him. I loved the book store scene and the last line, "No, it's for me."
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