Good Bye Lenin

Wolfgang Becker, Germany, 2003, 121 minutes

October, 1989 was a bad time to fall into a coma if you lived in East Germany – and this is precisely what happens to Alex’s proudly socialist 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! Five years after his award-winning Das Leben ist Eine Baustelle (Life is All You Get), filmmaker Wolfgang Becker presents GOOD BYE, LENIN! Fast and funny, intriguing and touching, Becker tells a story that is as unique as it is irresistible, an alternative history to that of the recent German past: a human story of the reunification not only of an entire nation, but of a family living in East Berlin. Cast as the two leads are performers who have each won the German Film Award, Daniel Brühl (Das Weisse Rauchen [The White Noise], Schule [No More School]) and Katrin Sass (Heidi M.). They are wonderfully supported by Russian actress Chulpan Khamatova (Luna Papa, Tuvalu). GOOD BYE, LENIN! also features original music by the French composer Yann Tiersen (Amelie, The Dreamlife of Angels).

Review by Mirella Yandoli
Written for EUFS Programme Autumn 2008