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Good Bye Lenin!

2003, Movie, R, 118 mins

Good Bye Lenin!: Review

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A hit in uneasily unified Germany, Wolfgang Becker's marvelously entertaining, and occasionally brilliant, political satire struck a unexpected chord with Germany's younger generation: nostalgia for the long-gone East German Democratic Republic. Ever since her husband left his East German family for a western "enemy-of-the-state girlfriend," Christiane Kerner (Katrin Sass) has dedicated her heart to the socialist fatherland. Her teenage son, Alex (Daniel Bruhl), however, is less enamoured with life in the GDR, and when Christiane sees Alex getting arrested during a rowdy protest march on the eve of the republic's 40th birthday, she suffers a heart attack that leaves her in a coma for the next eight months. While she sleeps, her entire world disappears: Head of state Erich Honecker resigns, the Berlin Wall crumbles and the venerated hammer-and-sickle morphs into a logo for the satellite dish company where Alex now works, and Alex's sister, Ariane (Maria Simon), trades college for a post at a Burger King drive-thru. The GDR is no more, but Christiane has no idea, and once she awakens, Alex is determined to keep it that way. Afraid that the news could trigger a second, fatal coronary, Alex decides on a bold course of action: He'll simply act as if nothing happened. With Christiane bedridden, he'll reconstruct the GDR within in her bedroom. Alex scours Dumpsters and flea markets for artifacts of a world that's quickly disappearing, and Christiane's friends and neighbors — older folks, mostly, who once shared Christiane's dream of a brave new world — are more than happy to play along. When Christiane asks to watch TV, Alex gets his coworker, aspiring filmmaker Denis (Florian Lukas), to edit together old GDR news clips into "new" broadcasts. Crazy as it sounds, the scheme works, but has a wholly unexpected side effect: Alex begins longing for what he now believes were the good old days. The film has been cited as an example of how a growing dissatisfaction within the new Germany has manifest itself in a nostalgia for the Wall (socialist-themed nightclubs and kitschy GDR-era collectibles are others) and Becker is careful to remind us that nostalgia has more to do with the present than the past. He wraps Alex's touching attempt to save his mother around a coming-of-age love story — he falls for a Russian student nurse, Lara (Chulpan Khamatova). Nevertheless, Becker is often no less susceptible to the fantasy than his young hero, whose perspective may be tinted rose but represents an alluring view all the same. (In German, with English subtitles.) leave a comment --Ken Fox
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