Finally

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Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck didn't set out to goad Germany to confront its past, but that's just what the 33-year-old writer-director's masterly debut, "The Lives of Others" ("Das Leben der Anderen"), has done.

The German filmmaker, in town recently to promote his Oscar-nominated film that opens here today, was inspired by reading what Vladimir Lenin said about Beethoven's "Appassionata" sonata.

"What astonishing, superhuman music!" the dictator told writer Maxim Gorky. "I want to say sweet, silly things, and pat the little heads of people who, living in a filthy hell, can create such beauty." So Lenin had to stop listening because "those little heads must be beaten, beaten mercilessly."

That small anecdote set off a large creative spark for Mr. von Donnersmarck.

"I thought, maybe I could find a way of forcing Lenin to listen to the 'Appassionata,' " he says. "It didn't come about from wanting to make a film about the GDR [German Democratic Republic], but from wanting to tell a story."

The Communist confronted with beauty in "The Lives of Others" is Stasi agent Gerd Wiesler. It's 1984, and he's a true believer in the German Democratic Republic, assigned to spy on playwright Georg Dreyman. Dreyman seems to support the regime, but Wiesler is suspicious. He is assigned to eavesdrop at the instigation of Minister Hempf. With designs on Dreyman's actress girlfriend, Christa-Maria Sieland, the boorish apparatchik has his own reasons for snooping on the playwright.

As Wiesler listens to the couple grapple with their art, their love and the state in their East Berlin apartment, he slowly begins to regain his humanity. The result is the best film of 2006.

Lenin also said, "Cinema is the most important of all the arts for us." Mr. von Donnersmarck seems to agree.

"If you have a troubling thing in your past, films are a really, really good way to work through it," he insists. "In some ways, we Germans have been less systematic about that so far than Americans have been about the Vietnam War." He points to a whole genre of films, including "The Deer Hunter," "Platoon," and "Full Metal Jacket."

Of course, Germans have spent a lot of time the last few decades thinking about their history -- but the focus has been on World War II, not its aftermath. Is "The Lives of Others" the first film to delve into the country's Cold War?