A STASI COMEDY/ STASIKOMODIE
Germany, 2022, 116 minutes, Colour.
David Kross, Joerg Schuttauf, Antonia Bill, Margarita Broich, Deleila Piasko, Tom Schilling.
Directed by Leander Haussmann.
The East German Secret Service, the Stasi, is not normally associated with comedy. On the contrary, there have been some excellent films showing the dark side of the restrictions of Communist -controlled Germany, The Lives of Others, Never Look Away, Goodbye Lenin, and Steven Spielberg’s Bridge of Spies.
This is a critique of the regime and life under the regime, especially repressive espionage, so many spying on family, friends and neighbours, reporting to the officials, the keeping of documents, by a touch of caricature and farce.
The film opens with a respected poet, Ludger Fuchs, considered something of a dissident, gathered with his family, especially his wife, for a visit of a German official handing over his file to the poet. In the file there is a love letter, passionate, and not written to his wife. This leads to the flashbacks to the poet’s younger days. He is played by the versatile David Kross (striking in Steven Daldry’s The Reader, appearing in a range of German films as well is in The Keeper, a football drama). He is first seen in deserted streets, obeying the traffic lights – and revealed to be under observation by the authorities on surveillance screens, and commented by his obedience to rules.
At this stage, he is rather naive, happy enough to be approached by the authorities and to join a group of young agents, sent into the more rebellious community of the 1980s, interested in the West, music, drugs, morals. They are called the neg-decs, Negative Decadents. A lot of the time is spent in the company of this group of young people, aspirations for freedom – which will be achieved within the decade with the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. Most of the agents can be spotted easily choose one rather gawky in this scene. However, Ludger becomes more and more fascinated, intrigued by the provocative young girl, Natalie, beginning to write poetry. He still brings his reports, rather inadequate, to the authorities. They keep some surveillance on him, and officials challenging him.
It also emerges that they will arrange a marriage for him, and that this marriage will last for 30 years.
David Kross, as in many films, is a blend of the innocent and the shrewd. And his character and performance highlight the inadequacies of life in the East.
This is a film for non-Germans to observe, to be interested in, to be amused by – but the success of the film definitely depends on a German audience and its particular German sense of humour.
