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Winner of the 2007 Academy Award for Best Foreign Film, "The Lives of Others" may be the most politically moving, subtle and suspenseful film that we have seen in a long time.

It resonates on so many levels, including the horror of the potential for unchecked governmental power to ruin lives. It is the story of individuals whose destinies, unfortunately, become intertwined in East Germany, a few years (1984) before the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Masterfully acted in an understated way, the viewer is both a voyeur of the spying done on behalf of a minister using the Stasi for his personal motives -- and a sympathizer with the plight of a playwright and his actress lover, both of them who are loyal to the East German government. Yet, loyalty is of no importance given the obsession of the minister who has them both monitored 24 hours a day for reasons that we won't disclose, at the risk of revealing too much about this absorbing drama.

It is a political thriller that scintillates with the questions that it provokes through the unfolding of its plot -- and its unerringly persuasive revelation of character.

None of the actors fail their roles or the film for a moment. And the script is as crisp and sharp as a tack. Capt. Gerd Wiesler (Ulrich Mühe) provides one of the most nuanced performances of any that we have recently seen, in a role that demands that emotion be shown sparingly, if at all.

"The Lives of Others" is exhilirating and solemn at the same time.

Like all superb films, it is a personal drama about people who quickly convince you of their authenticity. But, as an American in 2007, it would be extremely difficult to view the film without recognizing an ongoing analogy to Bush's warrantless domestic spying, knowing that he and Cheney have likely used it for purposes having nothing to do with "the security of the homeland."

It is ironic that the tyranny of the Stasi ended with the fall of the Berlin Wall -- and in the United States, where we have fortunately had no such physical barrier to our freedom, we are seeing Stasi-like tactics emerge in an incremental fashion.

"The Lives of Others" tells us so much with such a limited number of characters. It is a cautionary tale to be sure, but one that never loses its distinct power as a gripping drama.

There is a ray of hope. The Wall fell and then one realizes that the Stasi only existed because they had created the infrastructure of a police state, not to protect East Germany, but to control the East German population.

It is eerily familiar, a story that we are experincing in its formative stages, incipient yet seemingly implacable.

Amidst the wrecked lives the Stasi left in its week, there were occasionally good men who emerged from the hardened, ambitious shells of their positions as agents of a police. This is, in part, the story of one such man -- and the unexpected ironic ending drives that point home.

But the damage done can never be fully repaired. One can just move on past the rubble left behind by a totalitarian state. The pain of the hijacking of one's government by corrupted men with absolute power lingers for a long time indeed, even after freedom and checks and balances have been restored.

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