The Lives of Others

I was standing outside the Grand Théâtre in Copenhagen. One of the 50 most beautiful cinemas in the world. I worked at a competing cinema — Daumer Theatre — and I had a free ticket and a few hours before my shift.

I went in alone. They showed me down to the basement. A small screen, daytime, almost nobody there.

I didn’t know I was about to see the best film I had ever seen.

The Lives of Others. East Germany. The Cold War. A Stasi officer teaching agents how to surveil people — and then going on a mission himself. Listening to the lives of others through walls and headphones. Slowly being changed by what he hears.

I have a thing with slow movies. They annoy me at first. I want them to speed up. But over the years I’ve understood that the slow pace in the beginning slows me down too — and I get more into my emotions. That’s what happened here. The first scene. The film started. And I just felt it. Not thought it. Felt it.

When it ended I got out and I was so filled. I knew something had changed in me. Something about my emotional wiring.

I talked about that film to everyone who would listen — for roughly a year. It stayed with me the way only a few things do.

A few years later I was visiting my cousin in the Danish countryside. My life hadn’t progressed the way I’d wanted. I just wanted to do something different. I knew I wanted to try living in another country.

We talked a lot. About the film. About New York — I’d had this American dream for years. Art cinema, the whole thing. And then at one point in the conversation, out of nowhere, he just looked at me and said:

“You should move to Berlin.”

My response was just: okay. I’ll do that.

It felt right. I did the research. Found a room. A few months later I was in Berlin.

Less than two years after that I ended up working in what I now call the lives of others. The real Stasi headquarters. The actual building. The corridors. The rooms where people’s lives had been listened to, filed, used against them.

I sat in that train on the way to work and little did I know — sitting there — that less than two years earlier I had watched the story of the place I was heading to.

You have to trust one of two systems. One is drawing a red line and following the path — going to film school, doing the expected thing. The other is following your feelings. The things that fill you. The purpose that comes to you with joy, with epiphany. And then life changes. And maybe you only see the change years afterwards.

This is My Life as a Drifter. I’m Jan Korgaard. And remember — life is an unpredictable detour.