It’s 1984. The Ruling Party monitors its citizenship, its minute observations allowing the “others” to be categorized –– and persecuted. An Orwellian nightmare, but also the reality that intimidated the East German people until the Berlin Wall fell and the Communist government’s secret-police lapdogs, the Stasi, were swept into the rubbish heap of history.

Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck might have known better than to set his film in the aforementioned year, but he’s made such a sure-handed debut (one of the five Best Foreign Language Film nominees), sustaining suspense while building melodrama and orchestrating a uniformly superb cast, that such a freshman mistake is forgivable. Not so, however, the multiple climaxes, which are not only trite but sentimental. Some will shed a tear. I could only mumble, “Nein! Nein!” Still, for a first-time feature from such a 33-year-old writer/director, what works works incredibly well. If only he could have restrained himself from that final line of dialogue . . . !

Not that Donnersmarck suffers from a tin ear. His dialogue flows with a naturalness and a subtlety that are frequently clever. (And occasionally too clever.) A good thing, too, because not much else happens — in a film about a secret police force, not a single gun is pulled. The action is all surveillance, and that proves a more suspenseful option, as fans of Francis Ford Coppola’s 1974 The Conversation well know.

Stasi captain Gerd Wiesler (Ulrich Mühe in Michael Haneke’s 1997 Funny Games) is an unassuming cipher, a dedicated career snoop and skilled investigator. Of the 100,000 or so Stasi agents in the mid ’80s, he’s the model of the good German. Unseen and unheard, he sees and hears all about the “others” he’s assigned to, a devilish reflection of the angelic observers in Wim Wenders’s Der Himmel über Berlin|Wings of Desire. Only it’s not Berlin that he’s haunting but himself. One of his assignments is the seemingly innocuous Georg Dreyman (Sebastian Koch), “the only non-subversive writer we have,” according to Lieutenant Colonel Grubitz (Ulrich Tukur). Dreyman nevertheless draws the Stasi’s attention after the performance of one of his plays. “Like you, I like to provoke. Unlike you, I know the limits,” government minister Bruno Hempf (Thomas Thieme) scolds him. “The Party needs artists –– but artists need the Party more.”

Soon after this exchange, Wiesler nests in the empty attic above the newly bugged apartment Dreyman shares with actress (and the lead in his play) Christa-Maria Sieland (Martina Gedeck). It gradually dawns on Wiesler that Hempf has ulterior motives –– he’s got the hots for the sexy Sieland. Hempf tosses Dreyman to the Stasi and offers Sieland a choice: comply or be blacklisted. But then something profound and unexpected happens. Wiesler the loyalist breaks protocol, gently imposing upon Sieland during her moment of greatest weakness, and need. He sits next to her at a table; she asks how he might know her.

“I am your audience.”

Clever or trite, it’s of little consequence. Wiesler is telling the truth. It’s the first step on a long road of discarded secrets and lies that will find a lonely man set free.