Just months ago, I saw the Oscar-winning film The Lives Of Others. It was an amazing piece of work, and you could tell that director Florian Heckel von Donnersmarck (never mind the almost impossible to remember name) must have had the story bouncing around in his head for years, polishing it even before the whole thing became a shooting script.
Well, its lead actor, Ulrich Muehe, very recently died. He had stomach cancer. He was only 54. What a huge loss.
If you haven’t seen the film yet, it’s very cleverly made, and deeply touching. Somehow, it probably got under my skin because Muehe’s character, a spy for East Germany’s Stasi, and the troubles he endured were almost the same things I wanted to infuse into the protagonist of my little-known story, “Blind Spot.” Only that von Donnersmarck’s character was a lot more complicated and sophisticated and “more real” — which easily made it a subject of my “literary envy.”
I remember after watching it, the ending roused me enough to make some sort of a standing ovation alone in my room as the film’s credits rolled up, all the while muttering, “I either must learn how to create characters like that, or I’d cut off my fingers.”
Because it very rarely happens (at least, with me) that a movie could be so “perfect” that I couldn’t even identify any single thing that’s out of place. So like they say, it’s such a “tour de force” it simply blows you away.
Just as Muehe was breaking into the international scene with his first Oscar-winning performance, he dies like that.
There’s an old scene in Seinfeld where Jerry tells George that to make a good impression, leave on a high note so people will always remember that one last good thing you did and not all your previously mediocre stuff.
Maybe that’s exactly what Muehe did. He left on a high note. And what a darned high note it was.
Tags: The+Lives+Of+Others, Ulrich+Muehe
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