“Es ist für mich”
Saw Das Leben der Anderen (The Lives of Others) last night. Best movie I’ve seen this year (surprisingly, Transformers would probably be second) and it has what is possibly my favourite closing scene from any movie.
Against all odds, though, the best is yet to come: an ending of overwhelming simplicity and force, in which the hopes of the film—as opposed to its fears, which have shivered throughout—come gently to rest. What happens is that a character says, “Es ist für mich“—”It’s for me.” When you see the film, as you must, you will understand why the phrase is like a blessing. – Anthony Lane, The New Yorker
Bits of the movie reminded me of this passage:
The reason for his imprisonment was quite grotesque. At the beginning of the war he had been denounced for ‘anti-Soviet propaganda’ by his neighbours who wanted – and were subsequently given – his flat. When the investigation showed that he had not been guilty of any such thing, it was then alleged that since he listened to German broadcasts he would have been capable of carrying on ‘anti-Soviet propaganda’. He didn’t, it was true, actually listen to German broadcasts, but since he was in possession of a radio set despite the ban, he could have done so. Finally, although he didn’t in fact have a radio set, it was alleged that he could have had one, since he was a radio engineer by training, and hadn’t a box containing two valves been found during the search of his flat?
– Alexander Solzhenitsyn, The First Circle, Chapter Seventy-Five
very good!