d. Florian v. Donnersmark A small boy in the lift implicates his father in anti-Stasi views. Wiesler about to take his name but relents - an important turning point
@@danengscot7226 : They weren't necessarily evil,they were inflexible and authoritarian and sometimes they pursued acts that could be definitely considered immoral but in those times and in those circumstances such acts may have very well been indispensable in order to keep part of the german population in check,now,personally I wouldn't consider myself a pragmatist,but I do believe that,in some cases,the end truly justifies the means.
@@Seageass01 chill out; the main character realizes he will accomplish nothing by reporting the father, only take him away from his son; this scene is the turning point because he realizes the man isn't worthy of imprisonment just because he is against the Stasi
@@deltaboy767 Gestapo was part of the police. Successor to the former state or political police (names varied in different German states; before Nazi dictatorship German states controlled the police). SS was a Nazi party organization. After the seizure of power the German police got more and more under control of SS functionaries. Ultimately SS leader Himmler became chief of the police as "Reichsführer SS und Chef der Deutschen Polizei". Especially Gestapo and SS were extensively personally entwined. But apart from some higher leaders the Gestapo officers were detectives. Because they had to be professional detectives for doing their job successfully. Chief of the Gestapo (since 1939) Heinrich "Gestapo" Müller was police detective. The SS was the Nazi organization responsible for missions that needed force and violence. The SS was in charge of concentration camps. The Waffen SS was the military wing of SS and Nazi party. The SD tried to get police and intelligence responsibilities but was eliminated as competitor by the police. The amateurish wannabe agents of the SD got different tasks.
@@deltaboy767 The SS organization had never police or intelligence functions. The SS was never a public/state institution but belonged to the Nazi party. Originally just a small group for protecting Hitler. After the seizure of power and the establishment of the Nazi dictatorship the SS grew by getting more and more tasks. These were usually associated with using force, violence and terror. Thus it made sense that the police got under control of SS leader Himmler. The SD tried unsuccessfully to win responsibility for police and intelligence tasks but its amateurish "agents" were eliminated by the professional police officers and later got different missions. But many police, especially Gestapo officers acquired SS or SD ranks.
The boy will probably tell his father that he met the Stasi guy in the elevator and that they talked, so the father will live in fear for a very long time.
The thing about Wiesler's character is that he's not a bad person. He doesn't take pleasure out of threatening, imprisoning or (mentally) torturing people but he's cold blooded enough to do it IF (!) he thinks it's beneficial to a just cause. But he slowly loses faith in said cause.
What a load of crap. Of course he was evil. It doesn't matter if you "take pleasure" out of torturing people and being Stasi, it matters that he did all that at all with German precision and involvement. The idea that if you change your ways you were never bad at all is a joke.
@@AlexandraAndStuff Yes, it absolutely DOES matter if someone hurts people because he considers it an unpleasant necessity or if he does so because he enjoys it. Some folks are quick to judge other people from their high horses (particularly in retrospective of historical contexts) and simply categorise them as "evil" but that's an extremely simplistic, infantile word and way of thinking.
@@maltehenryk1409 there is a difference between those two categories, but they are both evil, no question. I come from post-soviet country and hearing you trying to whitewash a freaking stasi is insane to me. Would you say that a concentration camp officer who later on changed sides "was not a bad person". Of course he was. This is also a whole idea of change. If Wiesler was not a bad person, then he did not change at all at the end of the movie. If he did change, it was from bad person to a better person.
@@AlexandraAndStuff I'm not trying to "whitewash" anything and the fact that you are from a former Soviet country doesn't exactly give you a particularly objective viewpoint. If you are under the impression that I do have even the least bit of sympathy for the GDR or any Soviets vessel-state for that matter then you got the wrong idea. I also wouldn't judge a concentration camp officer without knowing any details about his situation or what he did or didn't do and for what reason. I understand your point of view but if I have learnt anything then it's that the real world isn't as black and white as some people would like it to be. There's always a multitude of perspectives and ambiguities.
When I saw this scene for the first time and the boy answered Wiesler's question, my jaw dropped. All I thought was "Oh, this boy and this family are in BIG trouble now".
Before all of that he believed he was a good man but he truly believed in East Germany communism. But because of this case he understood how wrong he was.
@@adamferencszi797 someone harmed my family and law enforcement didn’t help. I am often stuck somewhere in between the feeling to get level and forgiveness. Had something planned and would have hated myself for doing it, but I would have. Upon reading this I might have decided to let that slide. Too early to tell
@@adamferencszi797 It is not very complicated. If you chronically batter a person, he/she likely will accumulate hatred toward who he/she thinks are the assailants. If you happen to kill his/her loved ones, he/she likely will not care the identity and the power of such assailants. If you chronically strangle a person, he/she likely will suffer hypoxemia, and “evil ideas” like justice just might pop up. The film was released in ‘06. Mr. Mühe deceased in ‘08. The messages did not resonate to me until ‘10~’11. Then there was the plague. Yes. The human conditions.
My parents warned me at his age never to repeat what was said at home. Not a word, a joke, a comment….. God how I hate Communism and what it did to them and million others in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union.
The fact that Wiesler stopped mid sentence obviously shows you something had change in him. Big for him given his job that he's had for years. Such a good movie this one.
He stopped because he liked the boy, if he continued his full sentence and asked who the father is he knew that the boy would lose a father, so he paused, reflected and then asked about the football.
@@TiredofEarth I think if he was his old self from the beginning of the movie, he wouldn't have hesitated to take the boy's father in. He was pretty ruthless and committed to his duty. This scene showed he was breaking down the walls of his fixed views about people and seeing the good in them.
