OWEN'S BESTS
5. The Lives of Others
In the '70s, films like Z and The Conformist powerfully anatomized repressive regimes. They taught you what the stakes of freedom are, and Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck's wrenching drama of spies and informants and the malaise of Communist tyranny in East Berlin can stand with the best of them. It captures how the tentacles of fascism reach right into homes, into relationships, destroying intimacy as a form of control. At the film's center is the miraculous performance of Ulrich Mühe as a Stasi officer who starts to protect the playwright he's spying on after he learns what hypocrites his own superiors are. Mühe, who died earlier this year, makes that transformation as credible, and haunting, as it is subliminal.

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