The film "The Lives of Others" should be added to the list of books and films which bring to life what a disaster communism was. It is compelling and affecting. It is about a playwright and others involved in the theatre and literature in East Germany during the communist era. They are all under pressure to write and say things that support the regime. If they are disruptive, they risk being banned from the theatre. Their homes are bugged. They are followed. And, if they break the rules, they may be interrogated and imprisoned. The female lead, a famous actress, has to grant sexual favours to a government minister to be allowed to keep appearing on the stage. It is heart-breaking for her and her lover.

It is an excellent film and, being made relatively soon after the events it describes, it has an authentic feel. However it makes one realise how few such films have been made.

Apart from the world wars, the great historical theme of the 20th century was the worldwide competition between the ideas of capitalism and communism. Then, in a most dramatic fashion, communism in Europe suddenly collapsed.

Yet I know of few films about all this. I would be glad to hear of them.

More important, there are few films and only a limited number of books describing the economic failure of communism. I was, in a sense, fortunate to see the queues of people lining up for basic consumer goods in Moscow. I saw the absence of fresh fruit in Irkutsk. I went into a supermarket in Bucharest where the freezer shelves were almost empty and not refrigerated at all.

But anyone who did not visit, and all those who have grown up since then, must only be vaguely aware that communism was an economic disaster as well as a political one. There are relatively few films to fix this in the public mind for any length of time.

The relative paucity of media work on the disaster of communism is, I fear, a reflection of the fact that the media, in Britain at least, tends to be left-wing - and therefore not keen to expose the failure of the extreme form of their own beliefs.

"The Lives of Others" is about the persecution of people in the media. So it is by the media and about the media. It is as if the only way media people are capable of feeling and expressing outrage about communism is when the can see their own people affected. As for the the millions of peasants impoverished and starved, they are not considered important or relevant enough.

I don't intend to insult the makers of "The Lives of Others". It is a terrific film. I just wish that that film makers generally would do more about the wider picture.

Posted by James Bartholomew • Indexed in Media, including BBC bias

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