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Other People’s Lives
A Converation with Writer-Director Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck
I wasn’t sure what to expect walking into German director Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck’s room at the Alexis Hotel in downtown Seattle. Freshman filmmakers are a curious bunch, sometimes unable to shut up about the picture they've just created, while others can’t seem to respond to questions with anything other than a nod of the head and a brief four-word sentence.
In this case I probably shouldn’t have worried, the man behind the Oscar-nominated The Lives of Others every bit as interesting as his near-perfect film. “At the end of the day,” comments the director, “everyone always wants to talk about the political aspect of the Stasi [the former East German secret police] or my background in the East. That’s fine, but when it comes down to it the thing I want to talk about are the films that most interest me.”
Sounds like ingredients for a great conversation, but for the time being it is his debut people are most interested in learning more about, starting with how it felt to be a first-time director with a high-profile Oscar nomination. “The thing is that it happened in various steps,” explains von Donnersmarck. “Every country has the right to submit a film to the [Academy] for Oscar consideration, so the first question was whether or not Germany was going to choose my [picture] for deliberation.”
“After that happened, I was told that 61 films had been submitted, more films than has ever been submitted before for the Foreign Film category. Of those 61 they then chose nine, and when I knew I was one of those nine I think that was the biggest step. And then when the nominations were announced, and in a way that was the cruelest step because you knew they were going to narrow things down from nine to five.”
Ulrich Muehe in "The Lives of Others".
“The moment that the nominations were announced I was just praying I would be a part of most of the ones that were chosen. So, when I heard about it, it was more like relief than anything else because everyone had been hoping for this and I felt responsible for all my actors, for all the department heads, for everyone who had a part in the film.”
“In a way, I wish they had never told you about that step where it was cut down to nine because it is particularly painful to not make the cut when it’s only cut down to five from nine. When it is cut down from 61 you think nobody can expect you to be unhappy about not being one of the five best films when there are [so many] to choose from, but if you say nine films and then cut that down to five, I think people almost expect you to be a part of that. So, in that way, the nomination was a relief.”
As for the film itself, The Lives of Others presented interesting challenges to von Donnersmarck. But as this was his first feature, the director went ahead undaunted, somehow managing to convince many of Germany’s leading actors to take part in the production. “That was the most important thing,” explains the tall, ruggedly handsome European, “just to get the right actors because, at the end of the day, that’s what it is all about. If I hadn’t known I was working with the very best actors that there [were] I would have felt very nervous on the set. As it is, I just knew with the actors I had that if I couldn’t get it done with them then I couldn't get it done at all. [With them]I just knew I would be able to reach the exact nuance I was looking for.”
But don’t actors of that caliber add more pressure to get everything right? “No,” responds von Donnersmarck without hesitation. “There’s less pressure. I wanted to make sure I had the best people to be working with so I could really put myself to the test. And that’s what I said to people. On the first day before the shoot I [gave] a speech and told them that, ‘All of you who are working on this with me have already made great films, so if we don’t manage to make a great film out of my screenplay here than I know I will be the only one to blame.’ And let me say, I can tell you that my producers were incredibly worried about me saying that.”
After we get done chuckling, I ask the filmmaker why that would be, why the producers would care if he put the pressure onto himself and off the actors trying to bring to life his complex and multifaceted screenplay. “They felt I was giving [everyone] carte blanche, that I was basically giving them a full pardon in case something went wrong,” von Donnersmarck responds. “I disagreed. For me, this was what it was, as these actors had shown [many times] that they could act and if things didn’t work then I had made a mistake, that I had chosen someone who didn’t fit the part or I was unable to coordinate them in a way that something great would come of it.”
Sebastian Koch and Martina Gedeck in "The Lives of Others".
Speaking of the screenplay, with such an in-depth and intricate examination of a pre-unification Germany under constant surveillance writing and researching the project must have taken a tremendous amount of time. “The first idea with the whole dramatic structure I had in about one evening,” states the filmmaker. “Then I researched for over one-and-a-half years before starting to write the actual screenplay, wanting to make sure I had all the details right. In a way, writing a good screenplay is all about the details, you have to make sure you are absorbing all of those correctly.”
The director shifts in his seat a bit, his lean, athletic frame almost struggling to stay put as he pulls his thoughts together. “And, so, the original idea came from this quote by Lenin who said that he didn’t want to listen to a certain type of music anymore because it made him feel so soft inside that he couldn’t commit all the atrocities he [felt] he had to commit to finish his revolution. So, basically, my film took that literally and tried to find a way of forcing Lenin to listen to that music.”
Tackling questions like these means being able to strike a balance between the tragic and the inspirational, a line von Donnersmarck manages to walk beautifully. But just because it looks easy on-screen doesn’t mean it was simple making it appear that way. “I try and show life the way that I perceive it,” claims the filmmaker. “A lot of terrible things happen to us all. I’m sure no matter how you or I have been blessed bad things still happen. For example, both of us are now working in fields we hopefully both love, [yet] I’m still sure terrible things have happened to you in your life and terrible things have happened to me in mine.”
“At the same time, however, it is almost like there is some divine force making sure that when things get too extreme suddenly something great comes your way. And, when something becomes all too dark suddenly there is something that will allow you to laugh uncontrollably.”
Does that mean the filmmaker believes in a higher power? “Well, maybe it’s not that there is some dramaturgical divine force driving our lives,” responds von Donnersmarck. “Maybe it is just that when we reach that point that we need something positive in our lives we are more open to actually finding and receiving it.”
“Which I think is the same thing when you are writing a screenplay. When you just feel that things have become almost too dark and you’re asking yourself what it is you long for, I have the command over my universe, which is my film, to be that force [adding] that element of lightness or positivity needed at that moment.”
“In the end, I think that is all that I want from films. When somebody asks me what do you want people to go away thinking about your [work], I think they expect me to say things like, ‘communism is all evil’ or ‘constant surveillance is bad,’ but things like that are all secondary. What I really want people to go away thinking is that life is pretty interesting experience after all, and even because it is all just one crazy ride it is still better to take that life-ride than it is to kill yourself. [Life] is such a rich experience, it is so multifaceted, and the only way to find that out is to take the ride.”
As von Donnersmarck brings up the concept of voyeurism, I can’t help but wonder if he thinks a person can be a professional watcher of other people’s lives and not come away at least partially changed by what they’ve seen. “That’s interesting,” ponders the director. “I think it is possible somehow to forcefully shut off parts of your soul, but I also think it is very risky. Wolf Biermann, who is this great European poet, found out from his Stasi files there was an officer monitoring him that was so impressed by his poems he started writing poetry himself. He even founded this group of Stasi people who wrote poems and gathered once a week to read each other their terrible [poetry].”
Florian Henchel von Donnersmarck on the set.
We laugh for a moment about this before von Donnersmarck continues in a more serious tone of voice. “But in the same [vein] I think it also works in a quite terrible way. I have a friend who, in German, runs a charity that tries to combat child pornography on the internet. They have discovered that there is this crazy phenomenon that the policemen who investigate [this], just by searching for this material, become addicted to it and have to be changed to a different position after a few months. It’s a very strange thing, and what you live and [observe] in close proximity with will influence you, both in the good and in the bad.”
“I think that is why you have to be so very very careful with what you associate yourself with. I think there will always kind of be some kind of osmosis which is why, strangely, I have almost no art in my house because I cannot afford the kind of art that I would want osmosis to be happening with. I would rather have a wall painted in a color that I find beautiful than to have osmosis going on between some piece of second rate art and me. I [wouldn’t] want that to influence me, so I’ll only start buying stuff when I can really afford the things that I like.”
This whole conversation can’t help but make me wonder what it is that does actually influence the filmmaker, a question which leads me to the subject of Francis Ford Coppola and The Conversation. “I did watch The Conversation before making the film,” answers von Donnersmarck, “but only after writing the screenplay. A friend commented I should watch [it] because Coppola has so many interesting ways of how you visually portray a listener and I did learn a little bit from [his] blocking (which I usually think is masterful, even in movies like Peggy Sue Got Married which the director doesn’t even like himself but I enjoy).”
“But, then, I tend to take Coppola very seriously as a master of this medium. That’s not to say I like everything. I’m not a huge fan of Apocalypse Now, but I do like The Godfather films quite a bit, and I like a few of his other [pictures], and I do like The Conversation quite a bit, but I can’t say that he or his movie were a big influence for me on this. I don’t know… what do you think has influenced me?”
Not used to being tested by my interview subjects, it’s now my turn to squeeze a bit in my seat, my Coach purse slipping from my shoulder and onto the floor unleashing a mess of note cards, makeup and jingling change for me to clean up in embarrassment. In-between his stifled giggles I mention how much The Lives of Others recalled for me some of the more intimately human works of Ingmar Bergman and Billy Wilder, how the picture has some of the same unavoidable cadences of The Conversation.
“That’s true, especially the Wilder comment,” answers von Donnersmarck. “I hadn’t thought of that. It is interesting; in a way I do feel a kinship with Billy Wilder. With him there is something very strange [in his films] about how he tries to explore moral questions, although you can feel through his whole way that he finds it incredibly hard to judge people. I’m just like that. I’m sure there would be some justification to judge people for whatever it is they do but I find it really hard to do so. I can understand so many extremes, an acceptance of human nature and the ability to find it funny, sad and touching what it is that they do, and I think that is something which is also present in all of Wilder’s films.”
His answer brings up a few points I hadn’t even considered when I thought of the comparison, mainly the realization that, like Wilder’s best, von Donnersmarck’s picture refuses to judge its characters, letting the audience make up their own mind for themselves. “And I’m glad you say that,” responds the filmmaker immediately, “because that was very important to me. I always say when you enter a film, and I feel that someone is force-feeding me their moral position, it really irritates me. If I can feel the filmmaker’s judgment, and that is usually something you can feel within the first ten minutes, than I know I am not going to like the film. It’s really as simple as that.”
“At the end of the day, that particular film is only going to be a propaganda film. And it may be a propaganda film for all the right reasons, and I’m not disputing that, I’m just saying I’m not interested in propaganda for the right side anymore than I am interested in the opposite. When 9/11 happened, Bush sent people to Hollywood – I just read about this, I can’t say whether it really happened like this or not – to the studio heads and asked them to help him out and be on his side, have their films be all patriotic.”
“I tell you, had I been a studio head at that point I would have kicked him out of my office. I would have said, ‘It is in your fucking interest that we keep our full independence and just portray the world as we see it.’ That’s what democracy is all about. It’s not about serving someone else’s propaganda interests. That is not how you create a healthy society, and it is certainly not what America is about.”
Realizing he’s starting to climb up upon a soap box, von Donnersmarck quickly turns his attention back towards the film. “I didn’t want to make a propaganda film in that way, so I tried with every single character not to take [them] from the outside, tried not to ask myself how would a sophisticated ideologue interrogate a political prisoner, but rather to ask myself where is that character in me. Where is that part in me that would enjoy using my intelligence to exert power over someone else? When you ask yourself like that I think then the film starts becoming interesting because then it will be honest.”
“Did you ever read Carl Jung?” Once again von Donnersmarck puts me on the spot, forcing me to blushingly admit I dropped out of a psychology class right before we started reading him. Laughing, the director continues his thought. “He’s a really interesting philosopher, I think, and he had this philosophy that everything is contained within each one of us. That is it all in our souls; every virtue and every vice and every weakness and every inclination of whatever sort. There is a side rapist in all of us and there is a side messiah. We have it all there.”
“What we are and what we display to the world is what we choose to reveal. It is the artist, he states, who would go into those dark parts of the soul where normally you never shine any light, find that part and use it and display it in their art. And I think that holds true for writers. While writing something, I’m kind of acting out these parts in my head, and if I don’t take that from inside then it won’t be true. It just will not be true.”
All this begs the question, what is it about art that makes it so dangerous to those in power? “I think it is related to exactly that thing we were just talking about,” answers von Donnersmarck. “An authoritarian society, a totalitarian regime, will try and tell you which of those facets of your Jungian character you are going to display. They have a certain vision of what mankind should be, and this is what they try and force you to do.”
“Now comes the artist, putting you on a sort of virtual reality ride of the soul for the soul and then has you see that this [forced] reality is not what you are really about. There is no way you can force a [person] into their old way of being after they have recognized that they are not what society wants them to be. And that is very scary to a totalitarian regime, so they try to weed out the [artists] who take people on that virtual reality ride of the soul.”
“And this is what the Stasi always did. They tried to get rid of actors and writers and directors who did not stick to the government’s ideas of how people were going to be. They hated real individualism, because individualism is just far too complicated and dangerous for a [government] to deal with. Even with 300,000 police officers they couldn’t keep individualism in check. They like people, or certain groups of people, to behave in more or less the same way because then they don’t have to deal or cope with them, they can predict their behavior.”
“They hate unpredictability. They hate anything which is in any way different. Since real art encourages you to be different, encourages you to recognize that you are different and special, and that’s in a way the essence of art. I mean, art is the perfect antidote to any sort of collectivism, so it is just the natural enemy [to totalitarianism], which is why I think the art that rose to the top in the GDR for me isn’t art at all. It is something that vaguely resembles art, but it is not at all the deep kind of experience that will help you explore your soul.”
Which is exactly the kind of movie, the kind of art, The Lives of Others exemplifies. “Thank you,” responds von Donnersmarck. “Responses like that are really all that I could have hoped for. Thank you. This has been fun.”
