The last thing I expected to hear from Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, whose The Lives of Others has been nominated for an Oscar as best foreign-language film, was a defense of the Hollywood star system.

But that's exactly what I got when I met with Von Donnersmarck at September's Starz Denver International Film Festival. Why? Von Donnersmarck believes stars make it possible to interest audiences in difficult subjects.

He should know about difficult subjects. The Lives of Others, which takes place during the 1980s, focuses on a methodical agent of the Stasi (the East German Secret Police) who's asked to spy on a prominent theater director.

"If you didn't have Brad Pitt in Babel, it would perform like Amores Perros," said von Donnersmarck. (Both movies were directed by Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, but Amores Perros never quite escaped the art-house ghetto.)

"In the same way, Castaway - which is pretty much a guy sitting on an island for three hours - would have made only about $3 million if it wasn't for Tom Hanks. As it is, it made about $300 million."

Von Donnersmarck, who laments the fact that Germany has no star system, also believes name actors are a necessary component of a bona fide film industry.

"Once you have stars, your risks become slightly calculable. It's a great thing. It makes people willing to invest money in films."

Want more heresy? Von Donnersmarck doesn't necessarily regard film as a rarified form of art.

"I got very good reviews in Germany, and the film became a success. Then people felt cheated. They thought it was an art film, and then they saw it as a commercial film. People think those are totally different worlds, which is crazy because if you look at literature, those elements always came together. People like Shakespeare and Tolstoy were the most successful people of their time."

None of this is to say that the 33-year-old von Donnersmarck, whose 6-foot, 9-inch frame seems to match the length of his name, shuns art. He got the idea for Lives of Others when he recalled something Lenin once said to novelist Maxim Gorky. Lenin evidently was afraid that if he listened to Beethoven's Appassionata, his political resolve would melt into some kind of mushy humanism.

The impact of art on the apparently inflexible psyche becomes a paramount concern in The Lives of Others, a movie von Donnersmarck drafted in a Cistercian monastery in Austria.

The result, unlike many politically oriented films, couldn't be less cut-and-dried. Morally complex and beautifully shaded, Lives of Others raises provocative and relevant questions about where people draw lines in their lives.

To explore his subject, von Donnersmarck researched the Stasi. He also had input from Ulrich Mhe, the actor who plays the movie's principal Stasi officer. Mhe, who grew up in East Germany, had been the subject of Stasi investigations.

"You would be recruited. You could not apply," said von Donnersmarck of the Stasi. "They would say, 'You seem to have a way with people. Would you like to help us build socialism in our country?' You'd be flattered. They'd also offer financial advantages. They'd approach people in college, and ask them to go to a meeting (on campus) to see if anyone was agitating.

"But then it goes further. They push you gradually to cross a line. I would hope that honorable people would realize at some point, 'Oh my God. I'm on the other side of the line.' But to turn around takes the greatest courage. Not many have it."

Lives of Others was a success in Germany, but that doesn't mean German audiences were eager to hear the story it tells.

"There have only been a handful of convictions, and those were in the case of clear-cut murder," said von Donnersmarck of former Stasi officers. "All the others have gone free. Everyone knows some of the leading figures in Germany were Stasi guys. It's not healthy for a country.

"My father and grandfather always told me how good it was for Germany that the Allies were there after the War. Germany had to confront its past. They couldn't push it under the carpet. The allies made sure that Nazis couldn't come into positions of power again. . . . Nothing was done about the Stasi. We didn't have any Americans to help us and certainly no Russians."

Von Donnersmarck lives in Berlin, although he has spent time in New York and in Great Britain. At Oxford, no less a cinema luminary than Sir Richard Attenborough encouraged him to become a director. He's an avid defender of good films – even when they're different from his own.

"When I first saw Run Lola Run, I was in my first year of film school in 1997. I thought, 'This is just unbelievable.' I stayed for three screenings in a row, and thought, 'Our film messiah (director Tom Tykwer) has been born. Too bad it's not me, but at least he's been born.'"

Like Tykwer, whose Perfume recently played Denver, von Donnersmarck is leaning toward an international career.

"I'd definitely like to work with the kind of actors that will allow me to reach more people. I also think it would be a good idea to make films in English. It's the lingua franca. Take the most successful German film of all time, Das Boot. That still only made a quarter of what a small independent film like Capote made. That's how it is all over the world. English happens to be the language of film."

The competition is . . .

The Lives of Others must compete for this year's foreign-language Oscar with four strong contenders.

They include: After the Wedding (Denmark); Days of Glory (Algeria); Pan's Labyrinth (Mexico) and Water (Canada).

I've yet to see After the Wedding, scheduled to open in Denver on March 30. Thus far, only Water, which deals with the suffering of widows in India, and Pan's Labyrinth (still in theaters) have played Denver.

Days of Glory, set to open March 2, deals with the plight of Algerian soldiers who fought with the French during War War II.

denersteinb@RockyMountainNews.com

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