Good bye, Lenin!
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Good bye, Lenin! is a German tragic comedy film, released internationally in 2003. It can be seen as part of the ostalgie movement. Directed by Wolfgang Becker, the cast includes Daniel Brühl, Katrin Saß, Chulpan Khamatova, Maria Simon and Florian Lukas.
Story overview
To protect his fragile mother from a fatal shock after a long coma, a young man must keep her from learning that her beloved nation of East Germany as she knew it has disappeared.Cast
- Daniel Brühl – Alexander Kerner
- Katrin Saß – Christiane Kerner
- Chulpan Khamatova – Lara
- Maria Simon – Ariane Kerner
- Florian Lukas – Denis Domaschke
- Alexander Beyer – Rainer
- Burghart Klaußner – Alex's father
- Michael Gwisdek – Klapprath
- Christine Schorn – Frau Schäfer
- Jürgen Holtz – Herr Ganske
- Jochen Stern – Herr Mehlert
- Stefan Walz – a taxi-driver who looks very much like Sigmund Jähn
- Eberhard Kirchberg – Dr. Wagner
- Hans-Uwe Bauer – Dr. Mewes
- Nico Ledermüller – Alexander Kerner (11 years old)
Plot
The film is set in the East Berlin of 1989 to 1990. The premise of the film is that Alexander Kerner's mother, Christiane Kerner, an ardent supporter of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany, falls into a coma shortly before the fall of the Berlin Wall, following a heart attack she suffered when she saw Alex being arrested in an anti-government demonstration. After eight months she comes out of the coma, but is very weak both physically and mentally, and doctors say that any shock may cause another attack. The film depicts the attempt by her family, who think that the events of the fall of the wall would be too much for her to bear, to maintain the illusion that things are as normal in the GDR. To this end, they revert the flat to its previous drab communist-era decor, dress in their old clothes, and find old labelled food jars and place western products in them. Since Christiane is bedridden, the deception works for a while, but becomes increasingly complicated and elaborate. Despite everything, Christiane occasionally witnesses strange occurrences, such as a gigantic Coca-Cola advertisement banner unfurling on a building outside her apartment. Alexander and a friend with film-making ambitions edit old tapes of news broadcasts and create their own fake special reports to explain away some of the strange occurrences.
In one surreal scene, Christiane wanders outside the flat while Alex is asleep, and sees all her neighbours' old furniture piled up in the street for garbage collection, a car dealer selling BMWs instead of Trabants. Then, a huge military helicopter flies past carrying the upper half of an enormous statue of Lenin, which at an angle appears to be offering Christiane his hand. Alex and his sister find her and take her back to the flat. Alex and his friend create a fake special report stating that East Germany is accepting refugees from the West.
A subplot involves the earlier defection to the West of Alexander's father when Alexander was a child, an event which apparently drove his mother temporarily insane, and which prompted her ardent support of the party. Later it is revealed that the defection was planned by them both, but she bailed out to protect her children. Alexander's sister Ariane, now working in a Burger King drive-through, one day sees her father with a new family. Christiane later admits the deception and Alexander goes to find his father, partly for himself and his sister, and partly to honour Christiane's dying wish that she see him one last time. On the way, Alex meets a taxi driver who looks just like his childhood hero, Sigmund Jähn, the first German in space.
Christiane relapses, and is once again taken to the hospital. Under pressure to reveal the truth about the fall of the East, Alexander creates one final fake film segment. Alexander convinces the taxi driver to pose as Sigmund Jähn, who in the the segment becomes the new leader of East Germany, and gives a speech promising to make a better future by opening the borders to the West. Christiane is very impressed by the "broadcast," but in fact already knows the truth, as Alexander's girlfriend revealed everything when Alexander was not around. The tables are turned completely, and it is Alex who is being protected from reality. Christiane dies soon afterwards, and Alex never knows that she did, in the end, know the truth.
Overview
The film is a commentary about truth and deception, but is also a comedy and an exercise in nostalgia. Just as Alex is deluding his mother, she has been deluding the children all her life about their father, and in the end is the one deluding Alex that she is still in the dark about his deception. All of the delusions are done with the very best of motives, and can be seen as a metaphor for the GDR's attitude to its own citizens. The film suggests that, in hindsight, the fall of the wall and the reunification of Germany was perhaps carried out with undue haste, and in doing so did not permit the East German state to die with dignity. Alex's deceptions at least allow his mother to die with dignity, and each of them is a metaphor for different aspects of the East German state, with its routine deceptions, but unduly hasty demise. The film deliberately plays into the hands of those who nostalgically feel that somehow the "old days" were better than what followed, and in the end, the final deception is the one played on the audience.
Soundtrack
The music is composed by Yann Tiersen with the exception of the non-instrumental version of Summer 78 sung by Claire Pichet. Stylistically, the music is very similar to Tiersen's prior work on Amélie, but is missing Amélie's trademark accordian waltzes.
Trivia
- Alexander Beyer, who plays Rainer, Ariane's wayward boyfriend, also played a major role in the previous blockbuster "Ostalgie" film, Sonnenallee in 1999. In Good bye, Lenin!, he plays a former West German inhabitant who constantly mocks the former East German inhabitants, but eventually does such things as buy a Trabant. In Sonnenallee, he played an East German who constantly made fun of West Germans.
- Most of the scenes were shot at the Karl-Marx-Allee in Berlin and around Plattenbauten near Alexanderplatz.
- Much confusion was caused by Denis' t-shirt, which appeared to bear the green glyph pattern from The Matrix. The Matrix appeared in 1999, whereas the film was set between 1989 and 1990. A deleted scene on the DVD eventually solved this mystery. The scene featured Denis, an amateur film-maker, telling Alex about his idea for a film, where people were enslaved by machines to produce energy for them while they were trapped in a computer dream world - an obvious reference to the aforementioned film. There is a common theme of keeping people in a simulated reality.
- In the hospital scene after Christiane has her first heart attack, Ariane is shown in a chair solemnly playing a dirge on a child's plastic recorder while her comatose mother lies beside her. The tune she plays is a variation on Zbigniew Preisner's "Song for the Unification of Europe". This is an homage to (or perhaps a parody of) a similar hospital scene in Krzysztof Kieślowski's .
- The film includes scenes from East German children's programs including Sandmännchen.
- Although the East German products are accurately portrayed, many of the western products in the film are shown in packaging different from that used in 1990, including Jacobs Krönung coffee, Heinz ketchup, Pepsi Light, and Coca-Cola light.
- There are at least two homages paid to Stanley Kubrick. The scene with the wedding cake is a direct reference to the famous bone scene from , with Denis mentioning it as such; also, the scene when Alex and his friend set up his mother's bedroom is a reference to the sex scene in A Clockwork Orange, with Rossini's William Tell Overture being played on both occasions.
- Alex has a poster of the East German band Silly on his wall.
External links
- [Official site] (in German)
- [Promotional website in English]
- [}}}] at Rotten Tomatoes
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