Only a Coincidence?

Yesterday, we were entertained twice, going to both a movie and a play. We did not know quite what to expect from either.

The movie was 'The Lives of Others', the highly touted German movie about totalitarian East Germany, and play was Martin McDonough's 'The Pillowman', about another (unnamed) totalitarian country.

We did not know we were going to see two shows about totalitarian countries and, more than this, about police enforcement.

More than this, though, each had as a central feature, the change in attitude of a major enforcement official, who had a change of heart as he became more sympathetic to a presumed criminal. And in each case we were dealing with the investigation of a writer nd his circle.

Other than this, there were great differences. In The Lives of Others, the East German Stasi was attempting to get the goods on a prominent East German playwright largely because the Minister in charge of the Stasi wanted to get as his own the woman (an actress) who lived with the playwright. So, the investigation itself was corrupt, the investigator began to sympathize with his target, and when the target at long last himself began to undertake actions that were in fact anti-government, the investigator decided not only to doctor his own reporting, but, so to speak, to change the facts on the ground to thwart his fellow investigators.

In The Pillowman, the question was whether several murders of young children could be ascribed to another writer, as the murders bore similarities to some of his stories. It turned out that the writer himself was not at fault (unless you can be at fault for writing horror stories), but someone close to him was. But the harshest of the two policeman investigating the situation began to soften, as his own history began to cloud his mind.

The morals of the stories? One, that totalitarian countries tend to go after innocent people, but the innocent people may not be all that innocent. And second, that the enforcement bureaucrats are people, too.

Well, neither of these may be profound. I thought that both the movie and the play made for interesting watching (although the movie was a bit too slow and long for my taste), but neither was compelling and neither is the last word on this subject.

Dinner at Viridian, however, was the highlight of the day. The barrimundi was the best I ever tasted.