If I had seen Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck’s magnificent The Lives of Others (Das Leben der Anderen) in December it would have been on my best of 2006 list without question, probably somewhere within the top five. Unfortunately, the picture didn’t technically release here until today, so unless I lived in New York or Los Angeles this was never going be a film I was going to chance to experience until just a couple of weeks ago.

So what. A great film is a great film and I could really care less when I get the chance to see it just as long as I do get that chance. In the case of this one, I’m even tempted to send the publicist flowers for making sure I got the invite notifying me of the press screening. The Lives of Others isn’t just good it is damn good, an instant masterpiece of paranoia and forgiveness with echoes of Coppola, Wadja and Bergman all rolled up inside one fantastically intoxicating package.

It is 1984. The Wall still stands separating East Germany from their counterparts in the West. Captain Gerd Wiesler (Ulrich Mühe) is a true-believer working for the Stasi, the country’s all-powerful secret police, his latest chore training more officers to keep an ever-watchful eye upon their friends and neighbors. But his latest mission will have unforeseen consequences upon the single middle-aged officer, spying on noted playwright George Dreyman (Sebastian Koch) and acclaimed actress Christa-Maria Siedland (Martina Gedeck) enough to make Wiesler question whether or not he’s really on the right moral side of things.

The less said about this movie the better. What is important is that writer/director von Donnersmarck has crafted a fascinating work so rapturously thrilling I can’t imagine a better way to spend two-plus hours of my life than to be sitting in a theater watching it again. The film is a powder keg of emotional devastation and ecstasy, the whole thing culminating in a series of vignettes that alternately broke my heart and made me weep in cascading tears of joy. They do not make features better than this one, and considering the quality of what is typically released this time of year (see my Norbit review for an example) that’s a February gift a person simply should not refuse.

There are things that disappoint me, of course. Thankfully, none of them have anything to do with the film’s quality. Instead, I am reminded about how difficult it is for foreign film to receive Academy Award nominations in categories like acting or script. Sure there are exceptions, but the rule is – to steal from collegiate literary terminology – English or perish, and just because the Motion Picture Academy is averse to subtitles doesn’t mean films as good as this one should be so heinously overlooked.

I know what you are thinking. I shouldn’t be complaining in a year where Clint Eastwood’s Letters from Iwo Jima snags a Best Picture nominations, Guillermo del Toro’s Pan’s Labyrinth manages six nods of its own and Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Babel appears to be the frontrunner to win the top award. But the simple fact is that this, along with Pedro Almodóvar’s Volver (Pénelope Cruz nomination or no), deserved more.

Where is the love for von Donnersmarck’s script? Why no Supporting Actor acknowledgement for Mühe? What about the love for Gabriel Yared’s (The English Patient) score? These omissions border on travesties, and as much as I adore Oscar-watching a telecast full of these kids of catastrophes is almost more than I can bear.

Okay, so that is probably a major overstatement (I did think Children of Men was 2006’s best film, after all, and I’m not throwing a hissy-fit over it not getting a Best Picture nod), and Oscar nominations or no von Donnersmarck has still fashioned a feature impossible to forget. The movie is a fearlessly unsettling fevered dream bristling with comedy, drama, tension and insight. It obliterated my expectations and intoxicated my soul, The Lives of Others an instant classic signaling the arrival of an important filmmaker who I can’t wait to see what he produces next.

Film Rating: êêêê  (out of 4)