The lives of others.
Naturally, this happened in a pub.

There was a group of us, and we'd all had enough to drink to be loquacious. The conversation meandered around the normal range of pub conversations, and - inevitably - we ended up talking about politics. Or maybe film. Yeah: film. That was it. The Lives of Others in particular: that film from a few years ago about East Germany and the guy who worked for the Stasi.

I started chuntering on about how it was a pretty good film in the main, but a bit obvious in its moral and political stance: the DDR, after all, wasn't all bad. It did a lot right. Fantastic social services and education, for example. Great childcare. You could do a lot worse than live in the DDR.

I didn't know everyone sitting around the table well - only by name. How was I to know that one of them was from East Berlin, that her parents had been openly critical of the regime, and that they'd spent quite a lot of time in a Stasi prison?
( Enzyme is powered by sunlight, Thu 16 Aug 2012, 19:42, Reply)