The Lives of Others
Sony Pictures Classics | Release Date: December 1, 2006 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
89
METASCORE
Universal acclaim based on 39 Critic Reviews
Positive:
38
Mixed:
1
Negative:
0
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
The New YorkerAnthony Lane
If there is any justice, this year's Academy Award for best foreign-language film will go to The Lives of Others, a movie about a world in which there is no justice. Read full review
100
The New York TimesA.O. Scott
The easy, complacent distance that informs much historical filmmaking is almost entirely absent from this supremely intelligent, unfailingly honest movie. Read full review
100
Wall Street JournalJoe Morgenstern
Rather than dwell on the darkness and squalor, von Donnersmarck has fashioned a genuinely thrilling tale, leavened with sly humor, that works ingenious variations on the theme of cat and mouse, speaks to current concerns about personal privacy and illuminates the timeless conflict between totalitarianism and art.
100
USA TodayClaudia Puig
A thoroughly compelling political thriller, at once intellectually challenging and profoundly emotional. Read full review
100
TV Guide MagazineKen Fox
A tense and tightly plotted fictional thriller is based on real tactics used by the Stasi -- East Germany's secret police force -- to spy on and interrogate their own citizens. Read full review
100
SlateDana Stevens
It's an intricate, ambiguous and deeply satisfying movie, a tautly plotted tale of state surveillance and personal betrayal that ultimately becomes an ode to the transformative power of art. Read full review
100
TimeRichard Corliss
Smartly crafted, impeccably acted, The Lives of Others packs a subtle punch, from its creepy first images to its poignant finale. Read full review
100
San Francisco ChronicleMick LaSalle
A great film, the best I've seen since Terrence Malick's "The New World," and far and away the richest and most brilliantly acted picture to be released this Oscar season. Read full review
100
Washington PostDesson Thomson
To watch "Lives" is not just to enjoy a fabulously constructed timepiece; it's to appreciate a deft cautionary tale. Read full review
100
Portland OregonianShawn Levy
It's so full-blooded, smart, sexy, tense and absorbing, so cleverly written and shot and cut, so filled with superb acting and music, so perfect in its closing moment, that it surely ranks with the most impressive debuts in world cinema. Read full review
100
Philadelphia InquirerCarrie Rickey
Lives is a best-foreign-film nominee competing in a year that at least three movies in this category are stronger than Oscar's best-picture contenders. Read full review
100
Baltimore SunMichael Sragow
The unique, serious fun of this movie - and forbidding reputation aside, it is exhilarating - lies in the way that Wiesler, Dreyman and Sieland end up collaborating unknowingly on their own Design for Living (for a while, it's like Noel Coward for moral cowards). Read full review
100
Film ThreatMatthew Sorrento
von Donnersmarck creates a milieu so realistic that the attention-worthy setting becomes just a backdrop, while an intricate tale, as suspenseful as it is humanistic, takes over. Read full review
100
EmpireAlan Morrison
Already fêted, von Donnersmarck’s debut sets a closely focused, personal story against a more expansive backdrop of politics and power games -- a moving, enlightening tale of recent times. Read full review
100
Chicago Sun-TimesRoger Ebert
A powerful but quiet film, constructed of hidden thoughts and secret desires. Read full review
91
Entertainment WeeklyLisa Schwarzbaum
Utterly riveting fictional drama. Read full review
90
Los Angeles TimesKenneth Turan
It convincingly demonstrates that when done right, moral and political quandaries can be the most intensely dramatic dilemmas of all. Read full review
90
NewsweekDavid Ansen
It's hard to believe this is von Donnersmarck's first feature. His storytelling gifts have the novelistic richness of a seasoned master. The accelerating plot twists are more than just clever surprises; they reverberate with deep and painful ironies, creating both suspense and an emotional impact all the more powerful because it creeps up so quietly. Read full review
90
New York Magazine (Vulture)David Edelstein
Ulrich Mühe gives a marvelously self-contained performance. There isn't an ounce of fat on his body, or in his acting: He has pared himself down to a pair of eyes that prowl the faces of his character's countrymen for signs of arrogance--i.e., of independent thinking. Read full review
90
The New RepublicStanley Kauffmann
Despite the fact that parts of this film remind us of past pictures with comparable themes, the director and his actors make it immediate, gripping. Read full review
89
Austin ChronicleJosh Rosenblatt
Like all great screen performances, Mühe's magic comes out most in its tiniest moments: a raised eyebrow here, a slight upturn of the lips there. It's a triumph of muted grandeur; it's like watching someone being born. Read full review
88
Rolling StonePeter Travers
Von Donnersmarck has crafted the best kind of movie: one you can't get out of your head. Read full review
88
ReelViewsJames Berardinelli
With solid performances and a terrific screenplay, this movie offers solid, no-frills drama that feels organic and believable, not contrived. Read full review
88
PremiereGlenn Kenny
von Donnersmarck delivers something extraordinary and rare: a thriller that's entirely adult in both its concerns and perspective which manages to be as thoroughly gripping as any finely tuned albeit adolescent Hollywood nail-biter. Read full review
88
New York Daily NewsJack Mathews
Except for Hempf, every character is under incredible duress, and the performances are exceptional. With his first feature, an Oscar nominee for foreign-language film, von Donnersmarck has certainly left his mark. Read full review
88
New York PostLou Lumenick
The skillfully acted and directed The Lives of Others is a timely warning about governments that seek to repress dissent. Read full review
88
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Rick Groen
A movie that combines the Cold War intrigue of John Le Carré with the wired buzz of Francis Ford Coppola's "The Conversation" -- one of those rare two-hour-plus pictures that runs long but plays bracingly, excitingly short. Read full review
88
Chicago TribuneMichael Wilmington
Works beautifully, both as a social and psychological drama and as a taut, tightly wired thriller. Read full review
88
Boston GlobeTy Burr
The Lives of Others has similarities to Francis Ford Coppola's 1974 classic "The Conversation" but with undercurrents that resound across an entire century of European political history. Read full review
88
Miami HeraldRene Rodriguez
Beautifully textured and layered movie. Read full review
83
Christian Science MonitorPeter Rainer
The director is fortunate to have cast actors who fully embody their roles. Muehe, who once played Josef Mengele in Costa-Gavras's "Amen," has the ability to let you see far beneath his masklike countenance. Koch, dashing and intense, is entirely believable as a man of the theater; Gedeck exudes a sensuousness that this covert society cannot abide. Read full review
83
Seattle Post-IntelligencerSean Axmaker
Mühe's performance is brilliant, communicating more turmoil and pain with the droop of a lip and a flicker of the eye across an otherwise intently passive face than all the emotional storms of the cast. Read full review
80
The Hollywood ReporterEric Hansen
Starts out dark and challenging then comes to a startlingly satisfying and warmly human conclusion that lingers long after the curtain has come down. Read full review
80
VarietyDerek Elley
Superbly cast drama… that looks to be a solid upscale attraction wherever the special chemistry of good writing and performances is appreciated. Read full review
80
SalonStephanie Zacharek
This is a teasingly complex political thriller, but it's also a sort-of romance. Read full review
75
The A.V. ClubNoel Murray
von Donnersmarck gives his debut feature, The Lives Of Others, no particular style, and the absence of visual risk-taking renders an exciting premise ponderous and stolid. Read full review
70
Village VoiceJ. Hoberman
A compelling thriller but an unsatisfying character drama. Read full review
70
Chicago ReaderJonathan Rosenbaum
The fictional story here, set between 1984 and 1991, focuses on the investigation of a popular and patriotic playwright (Sebastian Koch); that the captain assigned to his case (touchingly played by Ulrich Mühe) is mainly sympathetic and working surreptitiously on the playwright's behalf only makes this more disturbing. Read full review
50
L.A. WeeklyScott Foundas
The Lives of Others wants us to see that the Stasi -- at least some of them -- were, like their Gestapo brethren, “just following orders." You can call that naive optimism on Donnersmarck's part, or historical revisionism of the sort duly lambasted by the current film version of Alan Bennett's "The History Boys." I, for one, tremble at the thought of what this young director does for an encore. Read full review
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