A summer education in film: Week 1

The Lives of Others (2006)

Set in East Germany in 1984, the Stasi (East Germany’s Secret Police) set about monitoring a playwright who is suspected of disloyalty to the Party. This startling film won the Oscar® for Best Foreign Language Film in 2007, not a bad debut for writor/director Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck. As the Stasi officer assigned to the case, the late Ulrich Mühe’s performance is a masterclass in subtlety; every tiny flicker of expression in his rigid face betrays a hurricane of emotion that has been suppressed after years of service to an oppressive regime.

This is a carefully crafted drama that is in equal parts poignant, tense, uplifting and heartbreaking. While not based on any particular true story, the fact that people were forced to live in this atmosphere merely twenty years ago makes the subject matter even more uncomfortable in its realism, but necessary viewing nonetheless.

Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (2005)

This film, from the creator of Lethal Weapon, could not be more different from the gritty reality of The Lives of Others. Set in L.A., a fantastical city at the best of times, here is a Hollywood crime caper that takes reality, smashes it and throws the distorted pieces back in your face.

Harry Lockheart (Robert Downey Jr.) is in L.A. for a screen test after accidentally crashing into a film audition and impressing the casting agents. At a party he is introduced to ‘Gay’ Perry van Shrike (Val Kilmer), a private detective who has been recruited to give Lockheart some experience of the profession in lieu of Lockheart’s film role. Not long after they meet, however, the bodies begin to pile up, and instead of becoming a gruesome horror story, the film succeeds as a wildly hilarious farce.

Downey Jr.’s bemused expression, as he lets the insanity of his situation wash over him, render his character’s predicament constantly entertaining; Kilmer is also terrific, clearly having a blast with his camp, streetwise private eye. Michelle Monaghan completes the unfortunate trio as Lockheart’s ditzy yet intelligent childhood sweetheart, ably playing along among the mayhem.

Just as the plot may be convoluted, narrative structure is disregarded as we are taken through the story by Lockheart, a narrator who can rewind or fast forward the film to refine his story. It doesn’t matter if you can’t quite follow the murder-mystery, the fun is in sitting back and enjoying the ride.

Dr. Strangelove or: How I Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love the Bomb (1964)

This cult Stanley Kubrick film, widely regarded as one of the foremost films of the twentieth century, is a bold satire made during the height of the Cold War, highlighting the stupidity and insanity of two superpowers armed to the teeth with nuclear weapons but too afraid to use them.

An unstable military commander of the United States Air Force gives orders for nuclear bombs to be dropped on the Soviet Union without any authority from his superiors. When news reaches the ‘War Room’, the President and an assorted mixture of political and military leaders try to put their terror on hold as they attempt to prevent the end of life as they know it.

A magnificent Peter Sellers plays several parts including the title character who doesn’t appear until well into the film, so we are allowed to revel in the other colourful, and quite insane, figures that we meet along the way, such as the gung-ho military general ‘Buck’ Turgidson (George C. Scott) and Sellers’ quintessentially British RAF officer who is polite beyond the call of duty. The humour veers from madcap to frighteningly accurate spoof, where everyone is fair game. If people like this are really running things, we should all be very worried.

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