"An innocent prisoner will become more angry by the hour due to the injustice suffered."
- Gerd Wiesler

I should start by tipping my hat to the man with quite possibly the best name in history, Director Florian Maria Georg Christian Graf Henckel von Donnersmarck.
Es ist wunderbar, ja?

I was 20 when the Berlin wall came down. It's as vivid a memory today as it was then, and this movie is smeared with the stink of that time. It's hard to express just how moving this is, but I'll have a crack...

Firstly, the pacing is absolutely sublime. It feels like a beautiful, serene calm stream on the surface but has an unseen undercurrent that threatens to pull you under at any moment. It really is a spectacularly well planned 2 hours of cinema.

With outstanding acting performances across the piece, especially from Oscar winner Ulrich Mühe playing Captain Gerd Wiesler and the leading lady Martina Gedeck as Christa-Maria Sieland supported by a truly magical soundtrack, this is right up there with the very best German films of all time. It's exceptional.

The costume design, cinematography, editing and direction are all on point, delivering an entirely believable and engaging inside view of the East German Stasi. It's a stark, bleak and yet strangely hopeful tale of the time and is heading straight into my top-10 for sure.

Watched as part of Scavenger Hunt #63 | June 2020 - #9/30