Good Bye, Lenin![1] is a 2003 German tragicomedy film, released internationally in 2003. Directed by Wolfgang Becker, the cast includes Daniel Brühl, Katrin Sass, Chulpan Khamatova, and Maria Simon. Most of the scenes were shot at the Karl-Marx-Allee in Berlin and around Plattenbauten near Alexanderplatz.
Plot
In a brief prologue, Alex Kerner (Daniel Brühl) recalls how proud he was along with his countrymen when the first German to enter space, Sigmund Jähn, came from the East.
The rest of the film is set in East Berlin, spanning from October 1989 to just after German unification a year later. Alex lives with his sister, Ariane (Maria Simon), his mother, Christiane (Katrin Sass), and Ariane's infant daughter, Paula. His father fled to the West in 1978, abandoning the family. In his absence, Christiane has become an ardent idealist and supporter of the ruling Socialist Unity Party of Germany (the Party). When she sees Alex being arrested in an anti-government demonstration, she suffers a near-fatal heart attack and falls into a coma. The police ignore Alexander's plea to assist his mother, releasing him later that evening to go and see his mother.
Shortly afterward, the Berlin Wall falls. In that time, capitalism comes to East Berlin, and Alex loses his job before "winning" a new position in a ballot to install satellite dishes with West Berlin resident Dennis (an aspiring filmmaker) while Ariane leaves university to work at a Burger King drive-thru. After eight months, Christiane awakes, but is severely weakened both physically and mentally. Her doctor asserts that any shock might cause another, possibly fatal, heart attack. Alex realizes that the discovery of recent events would be too much for her to bear, and so sets out to maintain the illusion that things are as before in the German Democratic Republic. To this end, he and Ariane revert from the gaudy decor of the west to the previous decor to their bed-ridden mother's bedroom in the family apartment, dress in their old clothes, and feed Christiane new Western produce from old-labeled jars. Their deception is successful, albeit increasingly complicated and elaborate. Christiane occasionally witnesses strange occurrences, such as a gigantic Coca-Cola advertisement banner unfurling on a building outside the apartment. With Dennis, Alex edits old tapes of East German news broadcasts and creates fake reports on TV (played from a video machine hidden in an adjacent room) to explain these odd events. Since the old news shows were fairly predictable, and Christiane's memory is vague, she is initially fooled.
Christiane eventually gains strength and wanders outside one day while Alex is asleep. She sees all her neighbours' old furniture piled up in the street for garbage collection and advertisements for Western corporations. However, Alex and Ariane quickly find her, take her home, and show her a fake special report that East Germany is now accepting refugees from the West following a severe economic crisis there. Christiane, initially skeptical, finally decrees that as good Socialists, they should open their home to these newcomers. The family decides to go to their dacha at Christiane's suggestion. Christiane reveals her own secret; her husband had fled because the Party had been increasingly oppressing him, and the plan had been for the rest of the family to join him in West Berlin. However, Christiane, fearing the government would take away Alex and Ariane if things went wrong, chose to stay in the East. She has come to regret the decision over time.
Christiane relapses shortly afterward and is taken back to the hospital. After meeting his father for the first time in years, Alex convinces him to meet Christiane again. Under pressure to reveal the truth about the fall of the East, Alex creates a final fake news segment. He convinces a taxi driver whom he believes to be Sigmund Jähn to act in the false news report as the new leader of East Germany, and gives a speech promising to make a better future including opening the borders to the West. Right before the family arrives to see the report on a hospital TV, Alex's nurse girlfriend Lara (Chulpan Khamatova) quietly tells Christiane the truth about the German reunification. Christiane understands then how much her son has gone through to create another world for her, how much he loves her, and so she decides to not reveal that she knows the truth.
Christiane dies peacefully three days later, by coincidence on the day of full official German reunification, and her ashes are scattered in the wind, despite this being illegal in both East and West Germany.
The film shows how Alex and Ariane felt that in some ways the reunification was too fast, exchanging many of the good aspects of East Germany for the excesses of western capitalism. Alex states that through the series of false TV shows, whereby he introduced a story for his mother in which a magnanimous East Germany had 'allowed' the West to reunify, the GDR was having the end it deserved, rather than the end it got.
Cast
- Daniel Brühl as Alexander "Alex" Kerner
- Katrin Sass as Christiane Kerner
- Chulpan Khamatova as Lara
- Maria Simon as Ariane Kerner
- Florian Lukas as Denis Domaschke
- Alexander Beyer as Rainer
- Burghart Klaußner as Robert Kerner
- Michael Gwisdek as Klapprath
- Christine Schorn as Frau Schäfer
- Jürgen Holtz as Herr Ganske
- Jochen Stern as Herr Mehlert
- Ernst-Georg Schwill as the taxi-driver
- Stefan Walz as a taxi-driver who looks very much like, or who may actually be, Sigmund Jähn
- Eberhard Kirchberg as Dr. Wagner
- Hans-Uwe Bauer as Dr. Mewes
- Nico Ledermüller as 11-year-old Alexander "Alex" Kerner
Soundtrack
The music is composed by Yann Tiersen with the exception of Summer 78 sung by Claire Pichet. Stylistically, the music is very similar to Tiersen's prior work on Amélie (in fact one piano composition is in both films), but is missing Amélie's trademark accordion waltzes.
Several famous GDR songs are sung and heard. Two children, purportedly members of the Ernst Thälmann Pioneer Organisation, sing Unsere Heimat (Our Homeland). Friends of Christiane (living in the same building) follow with Bau Auf! Bau Auf!, another anthem, of the Free German Youth. The final fake newscast with Sigmund Jähn features a rousing crescendo of the GDR national anthem, Auferstanden aus Ruinen.
Awards and nominations
BAFTA Awards
- Best Film not in the English Language (nominated – lost to In This World)
European Film Awards
- Best Actor (Brühl, won)
- Best Actress (Sass, nominated – lost to Charlotte Rampling, Swimming Pool)
- Best Director (Becker, nominated – lost to Lars von Trier, Dogville)
- Best Film (won)
- Best Screenwriter (Lichtenberg, won)
German Film Awards
- Outstanding Actor (Brühl, won)
- Outstanding Actress (Sass, nominated – lost to Hannelore Elsner, Mein letzter Film)
- Outstanding Direction (Becker, won)
- Outstanding Editing (Adam, won)
- Outstanding Film (won)
- Outstanding Music (Tiersen, won)
- Outstanding Production Design (Holler, won)
- Outstanding Supporting Actor (Lukas, won)
- Outstanding Supporting Actress (Simon, nominated – lost to Corinna Harfouch, Bibi Blocksberg)
Golden Globe Awards
- Best Foreign Language Film (nominated – lost to Osama)
Goya Awards
- Best European Film (Becker, won)
London Film Critics Circle
- Best Foreign Language Film (won)
Philosophy Talk
References to other films
- Much confusion was caused by Denis's 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.[citation needed]
- 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 lends a helping hand by buying a Trabant. In Sonnenallee, he played an East German who constantly made fun of West Germans.
- In the hospital scene after Christiane has her nervous breakdown when her husband flees, 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 Three Colors: Blue.
- The film includes scenes from East German children's programs including Sandmännchen. News programs, such as Aktuelle Kamera and other GDR programs, are subtly mentioned in the film.
- 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 2001: A Space Odyssey, 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. The name of the main character in A Clockwork Orange is also Alex.
- The scene with a flying Lenin statue recalls a similar scene with flying Jesus in Fellini's film La Dolce Vita and a scene with a Lenin statue being carted away in Kieślowski's The Double Life of Véronique.
- In the scene where Kristiane leaves the apartment for the first time after her coma, the way the elevator door opens and light shines from it into the dark corridor echoes Alan Parker's Angel Heart. In that film the elevator symbolises the main character's eventual descent into hell.
See also
References
- ^ a b http://www.good-bye-lenin.de/index2.php Official site
- ^ http://www.philosophytalk.org/pastShows/MovieShow.html Dionysius Award
External links
