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A Brilliant Conflict

Blending excellent reporting and strong storytelling, this is a disturbing film truly stranger than fiction

Excellent characters with emotional depth. My wife, daughter and granddaughter all enjoyed it...and me, too! Very good movie! You won't be disappointed.

I am always wondering on why the writers and movie makers treat us as fools? Maybe they really think that we are fools? Consider this. In the movie a Communist spy goes from West Germany to East Germany, donates his kidney and returns to his military base in the West, and all this just in one week. However, in real life after donating a kidney a person may need up to 12 weeks off work to recuperate, although most donors are more or less back to normal within six weeks. Or the Communist spy calls his girl in Eastern Germany from the personal home phone of a general, a commander of a military base. And that call is not traceable? On another occasion the spy buys an old microphone from a street vendor and attaches it under the table of the NATO head of intelligence. And then the knocks on the typing machine divulge to the listeners in East Germany the content of top secret materials. That part was really funny! Or the spy attaches microphone in full view under the lamp-shade in the hotel room of an American general. The movie is full of such dumb moments. At some point I thought that maybe the movie is just a parody on spy films. Nope! The creators of that serial were dead serious. Maybe we all became so intellectually disabled that we can swallow such stupid baits.

Set in 1983 when Germany was still divided; a young East German soldier, Martin Rauch, is given a difficult task; he is to go to the West and replace a West German officer who is due to work at the aide to a general so that he can learn what the west is planning. He doesn't want to go but he is promised that his mother will get the medical treatment she needs if he goes. Once in the west he must quickly adapt to the different culture and start feeding information back to his handlers. Keeping his identity secret won't be easy and there will be consequences for those who might find out. In various subplots the general's son has a homosexual relationship with an Eastern agent who is part of the 'peace movement', Rauch's mother has a collection of banned books and Rauch gets involved with a woman to gain access to the officer she works for.This series nicely captures the cold war era; paranoid individuals convinced that the other side is preparing to launch a pre-emptive nuclear strike, naïve anti-nuclear protesters and even the fear of a new disease; AIDS; this is helped by an '80s soundtrack. There are of course a lot of unlikely events and coincidences which are either necessary to get Rauch into his position unsuspected or to heighten the drama. There is plenty of tension throughout even the ending where it looks as though war is imminent works even though viewers will obviously know that there was no nuclear war in 1983! The cast does a solid job; most notably Jonas Nay who plays Rauch. Overall a good eight-part drama that I recommend to anybody who enjoys cold war thrillers.These comments are based on watching the series in German with English subtitles.

I am enjoying this drama so far but I have to admit that it is necessary to suspend belief at times in order to follow the plot. I have to assume that there was a considerable time between his recruitment by the STASI and being sent West as an ADC to a General. He has to have been trained fully in spy "tradecraft" he had to be trained in the ways and disciplines of the German Army and he had to have had a convincing back story to cover his training etc. What happened to the body of the man he "replaced"? Surely that would have alerted the security services that a "dead" man was now ADC at a major NATO conference. It is details like this that are the enemy of the avid watcher of these sorts of film. So it's because of these inconsistencies and inaccuracies that I am only able to Rate the show 5. I can come back at the end and see how I feel then.

This started with such promise, but by the 3rd episode it's all fallen apart. The character acting is way over the top thanks to the scriptwriting which turns into a parody of itself. There's still some nostalgic value which kept me going, but closer to the 7 episode you are irritated as hell, leaving you thinking this is just plain silly and unbelievable. Such a pity, this could of been something quite special! I was hoping for something a little more sophisticated like "The Lives of Others 2006". Give it a whirl if you still enjoy it by episode 6 you at the home stretch. But for me it doesn't match up to the above ratings. Sorry, I really wanted to like this!