The Lives of Others – 2006 von Donnersmarck

Part Rear Window (instead of visual it’s aural), part Orwellian dystopia political Cold War thriller (it’s even set in 1984), and part The Conversation (1974) from Coppola (we even have a scene where they pull the apartment apart looking like the epic finale of Coppola’s masterpiece)
A fabulous debut from von Donnersmarck—he’d fall flat with his follow-up (famous bomb The Tourist with Depp and Angelina Jolie in 2010) but then rebound with Never Look Away in 2018 which is closer (though as good) in quality to his debut
Intelligent and subtle meditation on privacy and surveillance
There are clear lines here of good (the Sebastian Koch character) vs evil (Ulrich Tukur’s character) and the man in the middle with the moral dilemma (a strong subtle restrained performance by Ulrich Muhe who would die shortly after in 2007 too soon at age 54)
I like the juxtaposition of Sebastian Koch and Ulrich Muhe’s character—Koch loves his girlfriend and has a warm home- lived in—– and Muhe sees a whore who is cold to him (he asks her to stay over and she tells him to book more time next time) and he’s got this cold sad apartment— as Muhe spies on Koch’s character he’s moved by him—he steals his Brecht book
Grays and muted greens in the color scheme production design– it actually has a lot in common with Never Look Back which is a sign of an auteur (that film was nominated for cinematography in 2018 shot by Caleb Deschanel)

A great tracking shot in on Muhe’s character as he sits there listening with the greens of the equipment surrounding him in the frame

Green typewriter
There’s some range here from actor Sebastian Koch in his two films with von Donnersmarck this and Never Look Away– he’s a very likeable character here and in Never Look Away he plays one of the most loathsome villains in recent cinema memory
A long coda- I had forgotten about it with the book dedication—touching