Good Bye Lenin!

Infobox Film
name = Good Bye Lenin!


image_size =
caption =
director = Wolfgang Becker
producer = Stefan Arndt
writer = Wolfgang Becker,
Bernd Lichtenberg
narrator =
starring = Daniel Brühl,
Katrin Saß,
Chulpan Khamatova,
Maria Simon,
Alexander Beyer
music = Yann Tiersen,
Claire Pichet
cinematography =
editing = Peter R. Adam
distributor = Sony Pictures Classics (US)
released = 9 February 2003
runtime = 121 min
country =
language = German
budget = € 4,800,000 (est.)
gross =
preceded_by =
followed_by =
website =
amg_id =
imdb_id = 0301357

"Good Bye Lenin!" is a German tragicomedy 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. Most of the scenes were shot at the Karl-Marx-Allee in Berlin and around "Plattenbauten" near Alexanderplatz.

tory overview

To protect his fragile mother from a fatal shock after a long coma, Alex must keep her from learning that her beloved state of East Germany, as she knew it, has collapsed.

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
* Ernst-Georg Schwill as the taxi-driver
* Stefan Walz – a taxi-driver who looks very much like, or who may actually be, Sigmund Jähn
* Eberhard Kirchberg – Dr. Wagner
* Hans-Uwe Bauer – Dr. Mewes
* Nico Ledermüller – Alexander Kerner (11 years old)

Plot

The film is set in East Berlin in 1989-1990. Alexander Kerner lives with his mother Christiane and sister Ariane in a small apartment. His father has fled to the West, apparently abandoning the family. In his absence, Alex's mother has become an ardent idealist and supporter of the ruling Socialist Unity Party of Germany. When she sees Alex being arrested in an anti-government demonstration, she suffers a near-fatal heart attack and falls into a coma. Shortly afterward, the Berlin Wall falls. After eight months, she awakes but is severely weakened both physically and mentally. Her doctor says that any shock might cause another, possibly fatal, 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 normal in the German Democratic Republic. To this end, he and Ariane return the previous drab decor to the apartment, dress in their old clothes, and feed the bed-ridden 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 his friend, a would-be filmmaker, Alex edits old tapes of East German news broadcasts and creates fake special reports on TV to explain these odd events away. Since the old news shows were fairly predictable, and Christiane's memory is a bit hazy, she is initially fooled.

Christiane eventually gains strength and wanders outside one day while Alex is asleep. She sees all her neighbors' old furniture piled up in the street for garbage collection, a car dealer selling BMWs instead of Trabants 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. Christiane, initially skeptical, finally decrees that, as good Socialists, they should open their home to these newcomers.

However, Christiane relapses one day and is taken back to the hospital. Under pressure to reveal the truth about the fall of the East, Alex creates a final fake news segment. He convinces a taxi driver to identify himself as Sigmund Jähn, who in 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 Alex's girlfriend had revealed everything when he was not around. The tables are turned completely, and it is Alex who is being protected from reality. Christiane dies soon afterwards, but not before seeing her husband one last time. It is revealed that he had wanted the family to join him in West Berlin. However, Christiane, fearing the government would take away Alex and Ariane, had gotten cold feet and therefore chosen to stay in the East.

oundtrack

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".

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.
* 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 "".
* 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 "", 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".

Trivia

* 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.
* The logo of the satellite TV company Thomas and Alex work for bears a strong resemblance to the hammer and sickle.
* The stills show on the spliced news broadcast referring to West German drug addiction are the actual police photos of the deaths of certain real-life characters mentioned in the biography of "Christiane F" (later filmed as "Wir Kinder vom Bahnhof Zoo") and originally published in "Stern".
* Alex has a poster of the East German band Silly on his wall.
* Alex wears Converse Chuck Taylor shoes, a "capitalist product", for the whole movie, both before and after the fall of the Wall, and even in front of his mother(interestingly the Converse logo is a red star).

ee also

*"The Legend of Rita", an earlier film of Ostalgie.
*Spreewald gherkins, one of the foods Christiane wants.

References

External links

* [http://www.good-bye-lenin.de Official site] (in German)
* [http://www.hackwriters.com/LeninDS.htm DVD Review of film]
* [http://www.sonyclassics.com/goodbye/ Promotional website in English]
*imdb title|id=0301357|title=Good Bye Lenin!
*rotten-tomatoes|id=good_bye_lenin|title=Good Bye Lenin!