Boxes and Glue

The Evening Class Interview With Florian Henckel Von Donnersmarck:

Donnersmarck: The great thing about fiction is fiction —when done well— is truer than fact. It’s truer than a true story. The word for fiction in German —dichtung— actually means density. It’s actually the same word. It’s the word for fiction and poetry at the same time. Of course you somehow have to make things more dense in fiction, you can make them more dense in fiction, ideally you do, and you’re encapsulating much more than the arbitrary qualities of a very loose reality.

I enjoyed a lot Das Leben der Anderen, even in a Spanish dubbed copy. I saw it last week. I am specially sensitive to stories about the moral implications of the relations between individuals and power (look for all of Graham Greene, most of Jpseph Conrad and most of my other favorite writers). The story is organized as an interplay between a narrative level where things happen and a meta level where most things, including the sounds of Gabriel Yared’s Sonata for a good man acquire a radically different meaning. We see both levels like a sort of omniscient spectator, not unlike a Stasi agent would.

Warning: The video is the trailer of the US release, not really a spoiler, but YMMV. If you don’t speak german, just listening to the music in a background tab will give you a great idea of the marvelous qualities of Gabriel Yared theme.