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I'm using the formula discussed here to attempt to dissect the film "The Lives of Others" as practice for figuring out my own characters' motivations.
Definitions:
protagonist: the main character. Has a goal.
antagonist: places obstacles in protag's path.
relationship/dynamic character: has been through it before, gives advice. Conversation between them & protag that gives theme. At end, convo is revisited, reconcile protag/antag.
Plot summary: Stasi Captain Gerd Wiesler performs surveillance on writer Georg Dreyman. After a while, he begins to like Dreyman and starts protecting him. Dreymann, meanwhile, loses a friend to suicide and writes a treatise on suicide in the DDR, which he gets help to publish in the west.
I'm not sure exactly who the protagonist is, using the above definitions. It could be Wiesler or Dreyman, or both. Their stories are somewhat parallel. I'll make the case both ways, but I'm leaning toward Wiesler.
Wiesler looks to be in his late 30s or early 40s. He wears a blue-grey jacket completely zipped to the neck and matching trousers. The glimpse we get of his apartment, in a Soviet-style Plattenbau, shows a very bland, lifeless set of rooms with hardly any decor. (If you're familiar with the Vorkosigan series, it reminded me of Illyan's rooms in ImpSec.)
Dreyman, on the other hand, lives in what appears to be a renovated older apartment house, with wood floors, a piano, art on the walls, and books everywhere. He wears trousers and a button-front shirt, the top buttons undone and no tie. He shares the apartment with Christa, his girlfriend, an actress.
The film opens with Wiesler performing an interrogation in Hohenschönhausen, cut into part of a lecture on interrogation techniques to a group of Stasi trainees. The prisoner is asked who assisted his friend in getting over the wall, and eventually he tells them it was Albert Jerska.
Wiesler and his commander Grubitz attend a play at the request of Minister Hempf. Christa is the lead actress, and Dreyman has a seat off to the side. (It's possible that this play is one that Jerska had directed before his blacklisting. I'm not sure, and I don't know if they say. It's a very odd play, in a socialist realism vein.) Wiesler thinks Dreyman isn't as clean as he appears to be, and he wants to watch him. Grubitz goes down to speak with Hempf, who tells him he wants Dreyman observed.
-Hempf is sleeping with Christa, though she's not enthusiastic about it; he wants to get Dreyman out of the way.
-Christa wants to be an actress, it's the one thing she wants to do. She doesn't believe in herself enough to think she'll be a good actress on her own.
Dreyman asks Hempf if Jerska will ever be allowed to direct again. He evades the question, answering, as long as there's life, there's hope (or, rather, hope is the last thing to die).
Dreyman has a birthday party, and his friends come over. Jerska gives him a copy of the sheet music for Beethoven's Sonata for a Good Man. His friend Paul accuses another friend of being an informant. Paul tells him to take a stand if he's human, then leaves.
There are a couple more scenes showing that Wiesler is a true believer in the Party and the Stasi, when he refers to the oath they took to be the sword and shield of the party.
Dreyman either truly believes in the aims of socialism or is very good at acting. (Note that his belief in the aims of socialism doesn't necessarily imply a belief in the state.)
That's enough setting up the story, I think.
So, a protagonist has a clear goal at the outset, and the antagonist places obstacles in his path.
What does Wiesler want? Initially, he seems to want to do his job and protect the Party from dissidents. As he gets to know Dreyman, through the surveillance equipment, he wants to protect Dreyman from the Party. There's some sort of machination going on between Grubitz and Hempf, so Wiesler may see it also as keeping Christa away from Hempf and helping Dreyman. He may also see Dreyman's much more interesting life and want a change from his sameness.
Wiesler sees Christa get out of Hempf's car and uses his wires to ring Dreymann's buzzer, which gets him to go downstairs and witness her coming in. They have a confrontation.
What does Dreyman want? Well, he's a writer, so he wants to write. He wants his friend to be able to direct again. When Jerska kills himself, he's catalyzed into writing about the state and how it no longer collects data on suicide because there are so many.
I'm going to call them parallel protagonists, I think. Their arcs are similar: their faith in the system is shaken, and they take stands in their own ways: Wiesler by altering his reports and outright lying in some of them, Dreyman by writing.
Wiesler's change starts gradually. A kid asks him in the elevator if he's really Stasi. He asks the kid if he knows what Stasi even means, and the kid tells him his dad says they're horrible men who lock you up. Wiesler starts to ask for his father's name, then he stops.
The first test comes when Paul devises a scheme to test if Dreyman's apartment is bugged, by having his cousin from the West come over and talk about smuggling Paul out in his car, naming the border crossing he wanted to use. Wiesler looks up the number to call the guards there to look out for this car, dials it, and doesn't say anything.
His decision is cemented when he goes to take Grubitz his report (I believe after the border smuggling incident? I didn't make a note of that) and Grubitz tells him about the ways to incarcerate different types of people, using Dreyman as an example. He tells him that the writers they'd locked up that way never wrote anything again. Wiesler rolls up his printed report and doesn't deliver it.
Dreyman's is more sudden. Jerska's suicide galvanizes him to action.
There are two relationship characters, also, one for each protagonist, although neither of them fits the "been there, done that" mentor role.
Or maybe Grubitz is Wiesler's antagonist. I thought he was the relationship character, but I might be wrong. He doesn't, strictly speaking, place obstacles, but he's the one Wiesler lies to.
Christa is Dreyman's relationship character, unless it's Paul. In the confrontation between her and Dreyman when he figures out that she's sleeping with Hempf, he tells her she doesn't need him. But she asks, don't I? Don't you? Because she's doing what she believes she needs to do in order to survive in the system.
When she's arrested for illegal drug use and taken to Hohenschönhausen for interrogation, she tells them about the typewriter that was smuggled in for Dreyman to write his story on suicide on, but not where it's hidden. Wiesler comes in to interrogate her (a test from Grubitz on his loyalty), and she tells him the hiding place. In order to protect herself and survive in the system, she agrees to be an informer. She returns to the apartment, and while she's in the shower, they come and search again. When Grubitz moves to pull the floorboard up, she runs outside and throws herself in front of a truck. (Ironically, Wiesler had already removed the typewriter.)
Actually, I think Christa is Wiesler's relationship character, too. He found her in a pub and told her she's a great actress, and to think of her audience, etc, which he repeated in her interrogation. Then at the end, he runs over to her and starts to tell her he'd removed the typewriter, but Dreyman comes out and he rushes off.
Who is the antagonist for Dreyman? I think Hempf, perhaps. He's the one who ordered observation on Dreyman because he wanted to steal his girlfriend.
I don't know if I've successfully done character analysis on this or not. If you've seen the movie, what do you think? Do you agree with my decisions or not?
Definitions:
protagonist: the main character. Has a goal.
antagonist: places obstacles in protag's path.
relationship/dynamic character: has been through it before, gives advice. Conversation between them & protag that gives theme. At end, convo is revisited, reconcile protag/antag.
Plot summary: Stasi Captain Gerd Wiesler performs surveillance on writer Georg Dreyman. After a while, he begins to like Dreyman and starts protecting him. Dreymann, meanwhile, loses a friend to suicide and writes a treatise on suicide in the DDR, which he gets help to publish in the west.
I'm not sure exactly who the protagonist is, using the above definitions. It could be Wiesler or Dreyman, or both. Their stories are somewhat parallel. I'll make the case both ways, but I'm leaning toward Wiesler.
Wiesler looks to be in his late 30s or early 40s. He wears a blue-grey jacket completely zipped to the neck and matching trousers. The glimpse we get of his apartment, in a Soviet-style Plattenbau, shows a very bland, lifeless set of rooms with hardly any decor. (If you're familiar with the Vorkosigan series, it reminded me of Illyan's rooms in ImpSec.)
Dreyman, on the other hand, lives in what appears to be a renovated older apartment house, with wood floors, a piano, art on the walls, and books everywhere. He wears trousers and a button-front shirt, the top buttons undone and no tie. He shares the apartment with Christa, his girlfriend, an actress.
The film opens with Wiesler performing an interrogation in Hohenschönhausen, cut into part of a lecture on interrogation techniques to a group of Stasi trainees. The prisoner is asked who assisted his friend in getting over the wall, and eventually he tells them it was Albert Jerska.
Wiesler and his commander Grubitz attend a play at the request of Minister Hempf. Christa is the lead actress, and Dreyman has a seat off to the side. (It's possible that this play is one that Jerska had directed before his blacklisting. I'm not sure, and I don't know if they say. It's a very odd play, in a socialist realism vein.) Wiesler thinks Dreyman isn't as clean as he appears to be, and he wants to watch him. Grubitz goes down to speak with Hempf, who tells him he wants Dreyman observed.
-Hempf is sleeping with Christa, though she's not enthusiastic about it; he wants to get Dreyman out of the way.
-Christa wants to be an actress, it's the one thing she wants to do. She doesn't believe in herself enough to think she'll be a good actress on her own.
Dreyman asks Hempf if Jerska will ever be allowed to direct again. He evades the question, answering, as long as there's life, there's hope (or, rather, hope is the last thing to die).
Dreyman has a birthday party, and his friends come over. Jerska gives him a copy of the sheet music for Beethoven's Sonata for a Good Man. His friend Paul accuses another friend of being an informant. Paul tells him to take a stand if he's human, then leaves.
There are a couple more scenes showing that Wiesler is a true believer in the Party and the Stasi, when he refers to the oath they took to be the sword and shield of the party.
Dreyman either truly believes in the aims of socialism or is very good at acting. (Note that his belief in the aims of socialism doesn't necessarily imply a belief in the state.)
That's enough setting up the story, I think.
So, a protagonist has a clear goal at the outset, and the antagonist places obstacles in his path.
What does Wiesler want? Initially, he seems to want to do his job and protect the Party from dissidents. As he gets to know Dreyman, through the surveillance equipment, he wants to protect Dreyman from the Party. There's some sort of machination going on between Grubitz and Hempf, so Wiesler may see it also as keeping Christa away from Hempf and helping Dreyman. He may also see Dreyman's much more interesting life and want a change from his sameness.
Wiesler sees Christa get out of Hempf's car and uses his wires to ring Dreymann's buzzer, which gets him to go downstairs and witness her coming in. They have a confrontation.
What does Dreyman want? Well, he's a writer, so he wants to write. He wants his friend to be able to direct again. When Jerska kills himself, he's catalyzed into writing about the state and how it no longer collects data on suicide because there are so many.
I'm going to call them parallel protagonists, I think. Their arcs are similar: their faith in the system is shaken, and they take stands in their own ways: Wiesler by altering his reports and outright lying in some of them, Dreyman by writing.
Wiesler's change starts gradually. A kid asks him in the elevator if he's really Stasi. He asks the kid if he knows what Stasi even means, and the kid tells him his dad says they're horrible men who lock you up. Wiesler starts to ask for his father's name, then he stops.
The first test comes when Paul devises a scheme to test if Dreyman's apartment is bugged, by having his cousin from the West come over and talk about smuggling Paul out in his car, naming the border crossing he wanted to use. Wiesler looks up the number to call the guards there to look out for this car, dials it, and doesn't say anything.
His decision is cemented when he goes to take Grubitz his report (I believe after the border smuggling incident? I didn't make a note of that) and Grubitz tells him about the ways to incarcerate different types of people, using Dreyman as an example. He tells him that the writers they'd locked up that way never wrote anything again. Wiesler rolls up his printed report and doesn't deliver it.
Dreyman's is more sudden. Jerska's suicide galvanizes him to action.
There are two relationship characters, also, one for each protagonist, although neither of them fits the "been there, done that" mentor role.
Or maybe Grubitz is Wiesler's antagonist. I thought he was the relationship character, but I might be wrong. He doesn't, strictly speaking, place obstacles, but he's the one Wiesler lies to.
Christa is Dreyman's relationship character, unless it's Paul. In the confrontation between her and Dreyman when he figures out that she's sleeping with Hempf, he tells her she doesn't need him. But she asks, don't I? Don't you? Because she's doing what she believes she needs to do in order to survive in the system.
When she's arrested for illegal drug use and taken to Hohenschönhausen for interrogation, she tells them about the typewriter that was smuggled in for Dreyman to write his story on suicide on, but not where it's hidden. Wiesler comes in to interrogate her (a test from Grubitz on his loyalty), and she tells him the hiding place. In order to protect herself and survive in the system, she agrees to be an informer. She returns to the apartment, and while she's in the shower, they come and search again. When Grubitz moves to pull the floorboard up, she runs outside and throws herself in front of a truck. (Ironically, Wiesler had already removed the typewriter.)
Actually, I think Christa is Wiesler's relationship character, too. He found her in a pub and told her she's a great actress, and to think of her audience, etc, which he repeated in her interrogation. Then at the end, he runs over to her and starts to tell her he'd removed the typewriter, but Dreyman comes out and he rushes off.
Who is the antagonist for Dreyman? I think Hempf, perhaps. He's the one who ordered observation on Dreyman because he wanted to steal his girlfriend.
I don't know if I've successfully done character analysis on this or not. If you've seen the movie, what do you think? Do you agree with my decisions or not?
