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Goodbye Lenin!
 Release
Date: February 27, 2004 (NY, LA)
Studio: Sony Pictures Classics
Director: Wolfgang Becker
Screenwriter: Bernd Lichtenberg
Starring: Daniel Brühl, Katrin Saß, Maria Simon, Chulpan Khamatova,
Florian Lukas, Alexander Beyer, Burghart Klaußner, Michael Gwisdek
Genre: Comedy, Drama
MPAA Rating: R (for brief language and sexuality)
Official Website: SonyClassics.com/GoodBye
Plot Summary: October, 1989 was a bad time to fall into a coma if you
lived in East Germany - and this is precisely what happes to Alex's proudly
mother. Alex has a big problem on his hands when she suddenly awakens eight
months later. Her heart is so weak that any shock might kill her. And what could
be more shocking than the fall of the Berlin Wall and the triumph of capitalism
in her beloved East Germany? To save his mother, Alex transforms the family
apartment into an island of the past, a kind of socialist-era museum where his
mother is lovingly duped into believing that nothing has changed. What begins as
a little white lie turns into a major scam as Alex's sister and selected
neighbors are recruited to maintain the elaborate ruse - and keep her believing
that Lenin really did win after all!
Reviewed by Peter Veugelaers © 2004
 - Don't
be deceived -- get out of cinema quick!
Goodbye, Lenin! seems to be an easy-going
retrospective and sentimental comedy about the reunification of East and West
Germany during the 1989 dismantling of the Berlin wall. It goes deeper, however,
into the reunification of an East German family with their deported West German
father when his presence in the East before national reunification was
dangerous. But this is not the selling point of the film, at least when one
evaluates the film’s marketing and the first hour-and-a-half. After that it
seems Goodbye, Lenin could have been two films – one a dramatic and
serious treatment of family ties, and the second a riotous black comedy and
satire.
I was expecting the latter. What I got was a film billed as a
comedy but that is not exactly serious and not exactly comedy.
The premise is simple and promising enough, potentially
hilarious, although on second thoughts is cruel and dark. Christiane Kerner (Kathrin
Sass) is a communist activist and when she has a heart attack while at a protest
against communism in 1989 she falls into a coma. The reason for her heart attack
would seem to be the sight of her son being taken away by police for protesting.
When she wakes up her attachment to her son is obvious. But waking up after
eight months means her son Alex (Daniel Bruhl) has to scheme so that she doesn’t
experience any excitement which can be life threatening. The kind of excitement
Alex does not want her mother to have is that of discovering the new world she
has woken up to. This raises the question of the believability of the premise:
wouldn’t Christaine be too debilitated to care? Wouldn’t the experience
mellow her to the real world? And so Alex’s attempts to pacify his mother is
the comedy, which is essentially one idea reused in several varying setups.
Depending on your point of view this one idea is a cruel
piece of dark comedy, which Alex’s Russian girlfriend, Lara, a student nurse,
points out when she questions Alex on the virtues of his actions. The morality
is played ambiguously. Alex thinks he is making her mother happy; the women in
his life (including sister Ariane) have questions about the plan’s integrity.
Goodbye, Lenin is not only morally ambiguous but
generically if offers problems: the one idea comedy meets a dramatic telling
about a family. These extremes don’t intersect convincingly, and the narrative
is weakened by its contrivances. What’s appealing is the strong texture of
characters and their performances which somewhat makes up for its discrepancies. |
