Awesome Welles Film Bazaar Session No. 5 - The Lives of Others

Think about it, it makes sense...

Veg too, unforch

Not the fruit!! The blasphemy….
I always have a baby Tajin on me to make my fruit especially delish.

What are you saying??? lololol. 😂

So it's been a while since I saw Berberian Sound Studio but in summary, Toby Jones gets freaked out, a lot of fruit is smashed, it's a whole thing...

I may have more insights once I re-watch...

Yes it must be tough being a double agent, or a double-double agent, which is, if you think about it, just an agent...

I’m wondering if the scenes in the hotel with the blood was Harry have a moment of psychosis and hallucinated those scenes in the bathroom and also the phone call. Harry tearing apart his home is clearly him having a mental breakdown and spiraling out of control. Reminded me that Philip K Dick was rumored to have been an informant for a government agency (I forget which) subsequently becoming more and more paranoid (although he did a lot of drogas so maybe it was just a delusion)…I would imagine at least a few agents or informants having breakdowns in the world of espionage and surveillance.

Funny guy. Nice to have one in the group. This was indeed during Watergate which resulted in Nixon resigning. If only Trump could learn from example…

Ok - The Conversation - aka Gene Hackman spies on the lives of others - ho-ho.
I just though this was a good thriller with some horror / fantasy elements in the dream sequence / premonitions / flashbacks.

The twist was excellent and while Gene was pretty appalled that the young couple would be killed by the boss / husband, he seemed pretty chill that they actually killed him, with the help of Hans Solo.

Not sure about the timeline but was this around or just after Watergate when the idea of being wiretapped was on the collective consciousness? In America anyway...

Also was this the start of the "playing the saxophone as a quirky character trait" trend?

See also Robert Downey Jr in St Elmo's Fire and Bill Pullman in Lost Highway...?

We may never know

You are absolutely correct, a stasi agent would not change after listening to one couple, unless they were on the other side from the get go and doing everything in their power to spy from within…that said and done, the director was inspired by a quote from Lenin where he was no longer able to listen to his favorite song by Beethoven because it made him want to be nice and he couldn’t be nice to further his revolution. And so with that, the director made this film as both a character study and a message of hope. But let’s be real, there would have been no way that would have happened. Not to mention that the Stasi placed informants upon informants to keep a feeling of omnipresence. I recall reading years ago that many people spied on their own families and neighbors out of pure fear they were being monitored themselves. What a crazy time to have lived. :(