Friday Night at the Movies

So this week at work all the movie buzz has been about Contagion, the movie that just came out about a killer virus that threatens Life on Earth as We Know It (I haven't seen the movie yet so I'm not completely sure about that part, but I do know that Kate Winslett, playing a CDC doctor, dies heroically, so it must be really bad, if they kill off one of the stars.) I'm looking forward to seeing it - I've heard it's compelling and scary and good story-telling as well as the subject of some extremely cool but creepy marketing.

But that's not actually what kept me awake last night, even though I was really tired when I finally got to bed. Last night Tom and I watched a movie that we'd had for a while from Netflix, "The Lives of Others." I don't remember why I ordered it - we are always looking for German movies for our German-speaking family members (that would be everyone but me) - but I'm glad I did, and that we watched it before mailing it back.

This 2006 film is about life under surveillance in the former East Germany. I don't want to give away the ending, but it's a compelling story of life under pressure in a country that tried to control what people could read and write. The fonts of every known typewriter in East Germany were identifiable by State Security, and if documents were found with content that wasn't to their liking, there were people whose job it was to identify the typewriter that was used to type it. A untraceable typewriter smuggled from the West plays an important part in the story.

In 1984, when the movie takes place, writing was done on paper with typewriters, making writing an act of great risk in countries totalitarian societies. Of course writing is still risky - journalists and novelists and playwrights and poets and scholars and bloggers still risk imprisonment or worse in many countries around the world. But it's harder and harder to control words - they control the newspapers, you post to the web. They control state television, you post to YouTube. They control the internet, you use a cell phone. Probably the role of social media in the uprisings in the Middle East and north Africa has been overblown, but I am sure that the nearly unrestrained flow of information across borders has contributed to the astonishing events that have taken place this year.

I hope it is not to long before I see a wonderfully compelling movie about how things used to be under an oppressive regime in Yemen or Syria, and I'll look back and say I remember that, I remember when it was like that. Until then, there are still brave people who are putting their lives at risk for a better future for themselves, their children, their country by marching, by writing, by uploading cell phone videos, by fighting well-equipped armies with almost nothing. The best hope for a peaceful future for the region and the world is a rapid transition to democracy. We have a chance, this time, to be on the right side of history.