Film Review by Tara Heumann
Goodbye, Lenin!
Directed by Wolfgang Becker
In East Berlin in 1989, committed socialist Christiane Kerne (played by Katrin Sass) watches helplessly as her 20 year-old son is beaten and arrested by the police for marching at a free speech rally. Overcome with shock, Christiane suffers a heart attack, collapses in the street, and clings to life in a coma for the next eight months. Though she is unconscious for under a year, the East Germany she knows and loves disappears seemingly overnight. The Berlin Wall crumbles; Westerners and Easterners commingle both on the job and in the streets; the arrival of the Deutschmark obliterates the East German currency.
When she is discharged from the hospital, Christiane’s physician warns that any excitement or shock could cost the fragile Christiane her life. Abandoned by her husband and with two young children ten years earlier, Christiane had made the communist ideals of the German Democratic Republic (GDR) her reason for living. Now, learning that the regime has crumbled while she lay helpless in bed will certainly shake her to her core. To protect their mother, Alex (Daniel Brühl) and Ariane (Maria Simon) create a fictional world in her bedroom in which Eric Honecker is still in office, consumer shortages are frequent, and Sigmund Jähn (the first East German in space) is still a celebrated national hero, rather than a common taxi cab driver. Smart and insightful, Goodbye, Lenin! not only tells the story of a successful capitalist takeover, but presents the poignant plight of characters who struggle to make sense of their family history against a backdrop of dramatic socio-political transformation.
As Alex quickly discovers, recreating the communist regime of his mother’s memory requires daily searches for now-unavailable consumer products, the re-introduction of abandoned furniture, and the donning of horribly outdated socialist-era clothing. Alex scours local dumpsters for discarded jars of GDR Spreewaldgurken (pickles), which have been replaced recently by a Dutch brand. Beyond poking fun at Christiane’s cravings for unpalatable foodstuffs, the film shows the extent to which the iron curtain has handicapped East Berlin. Ariane refuses to relegate her infant daughter to the plastic diapers worn by East German children during the regime. The antiquated television repair shop in which Alex worked is shut down. He now sells satellite dishes with a West German partner, Denis. As part of his elaborate scheme, Alex and Denis (Florian Lukas) produce phony news broadcasts that allow Christiane to take comfort in the regime’s “current events.”
The demolition of the Berlin Wall allows not only German citizens, but also innumerable foreign products to flow into and out of East Germany. The shelves of East Berlin’s corner stores, which once carried only basic necessities, now overflow with modern supplies. When, unknown to a dozing Alex, Christiane finally gathers her strength and ventures out into the street, she is struck by a Berlin that has completely transformed over the previous nine months. West Germans who greet her with an Americanized “hello” rather than the traditional “guten tag” are moving into her building, accompanied by shaggy fluorescent pink light shades. Banners advertising Coca-Cola are plastered to the sides of buildings, and advertising blimps float over the city streets. Signs of commercialism and construction are everywhere.
While Goodbye, Lenin! tends to the economic shortcomings of communism with humor, the film is conscious of the social contributions party supporters made to their fellow Germans. Communists and capitalists alike would commend Christiane’s selfless dedication to schoolchildren. Alex observes that his mother saw communism less as an economic ideal than as a path to substantial social change—progress to which she was determined to contribute.
Though some critics disparage the film for leaving the motivation behind Christiane’s socialist commitment unexplained, her absolute allegiance to the GDR offers valuable insight into both the political system and her personal struggle. When Ariane and Alex were young, their father Robert (Burghart Klaussner) defected to the West. Christiane planned to follow with the children but when she realized the near impossibility of obtaining exit visas and that she would risk losing Alex and Ariane, Christiane made the most painful decision of her life. She and her children remained in East Berlin. Her dedication to the regime she planned to abandon is counterintuitive, and some commentators have suggested that she adopted the GDR to fill the void left by her absent husband. As young Alex explains, after his father left, Christiane married the State.
Goodbye, Lenin! is an intelligent film that tells both the emotional story of four East Berliners and leaves audiences chuckling at GDR television and Burger King alike. The end of the Cold War brings economic rejuvenation and an open society to East Germans, the film tells us, but those people who completely devoted their lives to the State never found a replacement in the unified Germany.
Miss Heumann is a senior majoring in International Relations, Economics, and Spanish.
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