I just saw a film, an amazing film, that has left me so moved I have to write about it while that mood is still upon me.

In the early 1980’s, before Glasnost, an East German State Security officer sets up surveillance on a playwright who heretofore has been an exemplary citizen. The Stasi agent is cold, bereft of emotion, and does his duty. He is the perfect communist bureaucrat. But as he listens in on the conversations of his subject, hears him and his girlfriend making love, he begins to feel as though he knows them. He begins to love them, and when the writer actually does start to become an activist in some fashion (he smuggles an essay to the West about unreported suicides in East Germany), the agent actively protects him from discovery and prosecution.

It was a beautiful film, a wonderful example of how people do change. I cannot recommend it enough. Go rent it and watch it. You won’t be disappointed.