View Full Version : German Series-The Same Sky

13-07-17, 20:24
It's currently available with English subtitles on Netflix. At three episodes, it goes quickly.

On one level it's a spy thriller, an exploration of the "Romeo" program where East German spies were trained to go to the west, start a romantic relationship with westerners with access to intelligence information, and then spy on them. In this case, the woman is quite a bit older.

On another level, it's a look at male-female relationships (how easily we can be "played"), and also, through subordinate story lines, at parent-child relationships.

It's also an unflinching look at life in Communist East Germany. What a horror it was, and not mainly because of the poverty of the material life, but because of the poverty of the "intellectual" and "spiritual" life, if you will, and the constant fear when you live in a world where your every word is reported. I knew all this from numerous other accounts, but seeing it "in the round" makes a different kind of impression.

I read where the director, who had often visited East Germany at that time, says there was good there: a sense of community! If that's what he meant to portray, he totally failed. What kind of "community" forces you to belong to it? Madness.

I...well... "enjoyed" is the wrong word, but I thought it was well worth watching.