How many movies have you seen where you had to pause after thirty minutes just to cry? If the answer is anything but zero, how many of those movies made you cry not because something was sad, but just because it was so outrageously beautiful? This is such a movie.

“The Lives of Others” takes place in Germany under Soviet occupation. We meet a surveillance specialist of the Stasi police, and the couple he is ordered to keep watch over. As the man in the couple, a poet named Georg, decides to take action against the suppressing system they are under, the tension rises, and all characters involved must make difficult choices about which part they will play.

Although a surveillance thriller on the surface, “The Lives of Others” captures not only the difficulties of being human, but also just how wonderful these little battles of ours really are. It shows the choices we make between Love and fear so clearly, and with a poetry of Shakespearian magnitude. The movie won an Oscar for Best Foreign Film in 2007, and is the closest thing I have to a favorite movie of all time. I’m kind of enthusiastic about this, can you tell? Anyway, you can see the trailer here, and the film itself can be found here.

To quote another reviewer, this is “137 minutes of the best entertainment imaginable”, and highly relevant not only to those seeking Spiritual Enlightenment, but to all feeling human beings. I genuinly hope you’ll enjoy it as much as I did.

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