The Frame

I went into this thinking “it better be pretty darn good if it’s going to compensate for my bitterness at it winning the Best Picture Oscar over Pan’s Labyrinth.” And you know, it’s not better than Pan’s, but it IS pretty darn good. It’s the late 1980s in East Berlin; one main character is a surveillance agent, the other is the writer he’s assigned to watch. As the writer gets more and more involved in subversive activities, his surveiller gets more and more entrenched in his life and eventually begins covering up evidence from his superiors. There’s an element of predictability to all of this, but it’s handled with a great deal of finesse in both acting and directing. The end of the movie, after the Berlin Wall has come down, is also very effective. I figure if something not Pan’s Labyrinth had to be named the best foreign film of the year, The Lives of Others is a more than acceptable choice.
Well Above Average