Brilliant screenplay! A story within a story, convincingly told in a grey communist block palate and a rigid, symmetrical mise-en-scene reminiscent of fascist architecture.
And the theme is the transformative power of art. The life of art transforms the most brainwashed, rigid, suppressed, government stooge into taking risks, acting passionately and laying his own well-being on the line for others.
And while this transformation is truly affecting, the man, a Stasi spy in East Berlin, does not completely transform. This isn't a sappy, childish fantasy. This is East Berlin. He sacrifices himself, his power in life, to enable another with more revolutionary potential power to continue on and to affect their society in a more liberating direction. But in becoming more courageous, he is stymied by his supervisors and the institution for which he works. East Germany falls, Berlin changes, and in the end he is too poor to be free or dramatically free-willed. He pushes on and that in itself is courageous.
