Since winning the 2006 Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film,

"Das Leben der Anderen" ("The Lives of Others") has gotten a new spate of interest. The film is over a year old (it was originally released in Germany last March), but there's still time to catch it locally, although you may have to drive a ways to find it. For characterdriven drama buffs, I consider director Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck's magnificent opus to East Germany's oppressive regime a must-see.

Ulrich Mühe plays Stasi agent Capt. Gerd Wiesler, part of the Deutsche Demokratische Republik's secret police. The year is 1984 (suitably Orwellian, by the way) and Wiesler, a lonely and apathetic man whose very existence is his duty to the party, is trustful of nobody. He knows exactly how to interrogate prisoners, recognizes immediately who's guilty and who's innocent, and proceeds to mentally torment both with chilling, impassive precision.

Illustrious author and playwright Georg Dreyman (Sebastian Koch) is one of East Germany's few nonsubversive artists, which makes him an influential party favorite and also, in Wiesler's opinion, a man to watch closely. So when Wiesler is ordered to wiretap Dreyman's apartment, he secretly relishes the assignment. Wiesler is equally suspicious of actress ChristaMaria Sieland (Martina Gedeck), Dreyman's live-in girlfriend.

But something extraordinary begins to happen to Wiesler while infiltrating Dreyman's life. He becomes enamored of the socially aware writer. It is clear to Wiesler that Dreyman loves his Germany, gently arguing with his more rebellious, avant-garde compatriots who seethe under Communist oppression.

Dreyman is an oddly persuasive nonconformist- a man who may not believe in the system but believes in coexistence, his written words inflammatory in their reflection of society. He is subversive without intending to be subversive, a seemingly uncomplicated man rife with complication.

Listening in on Dreyman's world each night, Wiesler is slowly smitten.

When several of the writer's friends insist that Dreyman's apartment is bugged, as theirs are, Dreyman argues that it is not. The dare sparks a roguish plan, and a simulated escape from East Germany is planned, quite loudly, in Dreyman's living room. If the place is bugged, the secret police will be waiting.

Wiesler hears the plan and, believing it is genuine, decides to give Dreyman "a gift." He doesn't report the planned escape. Yet his generosity begins a strange spiral of events. Once Dreyman's apartment is believed to be clean, it becomes a central location for a far more elaborate plan of exposing conditions under Communist oppression. Wiesler continues to eavesdrop, a man transfixed, at the crossroads of his own ideological life.

"The Lives of Others" is a stunning, gritty and astute portrayal of East Germany under oppression. In a sense, Wiesler is representative of the entire system- a man who takes orders without question, who knows the difference between "right and wrong" simply because of what he is told. Yet even among Wiesler's secret police, corruption is rampant: Wiesler comes to realize that his party's principles and its morality are worlds apart. And Wiesler is a man of principle.

The film, rendered in washed grays and drab blues, seems oppressive even in its happy moments. Wiesler's slow realization certainly must have mirrored the confusion of an entire social order on the verge of collapse.

Yet by portraying this one man's simple act of kindness, one senses similar small deeds multiplied a hundred times and then a thousand and then a million- to eventually change the course of history. Through Wiesler's unpredicted act, we sense an entire ideology on the verge of ruin. But we also witness its unanticipated results.

I admit that "The Lives of Others" opens slowly- the film's first half is a painstaking character sketch of Wiesler's intense investigation, of Dreyman's carefully constructed world and of girlfriend Sieland's internal conflicts and self-doubt.

But "The Lives of Others" changes gears in a single whisper; with an almost hypnotic pulse one is drawn into a suspenseful game of cat and mouse. Loyalties change. Betrayals occur. The payoff moment is as worthy as that of any film I've seen in years. For historians and drama buffs, I recommend catching "The Lives of Others" on the big screen. See this one in theaters while there's still time.