The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 marked the end of the pernicious influence of the Stasi -- the East German secret police, who spied on their own citizens and developed a massive, paper-based database which involved perfectly ordinary people in a network of domestic surveillance, informing on neighbors and family members, and the bugging of homes and places of work. One of the greatest movies of recent years is based on the effect that the Stasi has on one East German writer, and how the actions of one Stasi official have far-reaching redemptive results.

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Wiesler is an uncompromising believer in the Socialism of East Germany and therefore in the goals of the intelligence network for which he works. But gradually he comes to see that higher East German officials within the Stasi do not share his purity of vision, but instead simply exploit the surveillance machinery for their own selfish ends -- to satisfy their personal lust, or to carve out a career. And once Wiesler's unthinking idealism is destroyed in this way, he is at the mercy of new influences -- influences that are made available to him through the very people he is spying upon.

Wiesler's subsequent actions endanger primarily himself. And though at the very end of the movie he gets his reward, this is not the real message of the film. Instead, its focus is the feeling that Wiesler experiences as he listens to his unwitting subjects -- the feeling of compassion.

Steps 10, 11 and 12 do not teach compassion -- instead, compassion is an inevitable by-product of working them. Compassion is not about feeling sorry for other people. It is about identifying with them wholly and completely. And when the feeling of compassion arises, the compulsion to act is irresistible. Wiesler does what he does not because he feels sorry for his victim, but because he realizes that he, Wiesler, is not at heart a Socialist idealist, but the actual, decent human being he is spying on.