Preview
GOOD BYE, LENIN!
Starring Daniel Bruhl, Katrin Sass and Maria Simon
Directed by Wolfgang Becker
Opens Friday, April 16
Globe Cinema
A charming tragicomedy about a young man’s tireless efforts to spare his ailing mother some unfortunate news about the Berlin Wall, Good Bye, Lenin! became something more than a hit movie when released in its native Germany last year – it snowballed into a cultural phenomenon.
Germany’s reunification was popularly perceived as a triumph of vibrant Western capitalism over feeble Eastern socialism. But the psychological impact on the former citizens of the German Democratic Republic (GDR) went largely overlooked. These people were expected to forget 40 years of dogma overnight and do so with a Coke and a smile. As director Wolfgang Becker says, "Just imagine your life changing completely from one day to the next and nobody asks if it is OK for you. You just have to adapt. If you don’t… you have a problem."
Alex (Daniel Bruhl) and Ariane (Maria Simon) live with their mother Christiane (Katrin Sass) in East Berlin. Single since her husband defected a decade before, Christiane is a passionate socialist who ardently believes in the GDR’s promises of equality. A heart attack puts Christiane in a coma days before the Wall comes down and as she sleeps, her kids adapt to the new economy: Alex begins selling TV satellite dishes while Ariane trades in her drab lifestyle for a Burger King uniform and a West Berliner boyfriend. Although her children are relieved when Christiane wakes up, the doctor tells them that any sudden shock could provoke another heart attack. Alex essentially recreates the GDR for his mother, going so far as to create fake news broadcasts that continue to trumpet capitalism’s imminent collapse.
Good Bye, Lenin!’s often hilarious but essentially melancholy tale of a family getting trampled by the march of history struck a chord with German viewers and commentators, most of whom are just beginning to get some perspective on the shotgun wedding that occurred between the two Germanys 14 years ago. "For some reason, it became a big media thing in Germany," says Becker. "There was a big wave of what they called ‘ostalgia’ – the word is a combination of nostalgia and ‘ost,’ which means east. Every television station now has a retro show about the GDR and things like this. Everybody asks me about it like I’m the father of it all, but I tell them, ‘I have nothing to do with that.’"
A veteran television and film director who co-founded Berlin’s X-Filme production company with director Tom Tykwer, Becker would prefer his movie be appreciated for its own merits. He’s understandably pleased that Good Bye, Lenin! has been so successful in countries where it has not sparked social debates. It won seven awards at the European Film Awards and has outgrossed Tykwer’s Run Lola Run to become the most internationally successful German film. Healthy per-screen averages in the first weeks of its U.S. release suggest that the success of Good Bye, Lenin! will be repeated in Canada.
With its sparkling score by Yann Tiersen (Amelie) and careful balance of whimsy and pathos, Becker’s film is very engaging. Though lightweight as a political satire, Good Bye, Lenin! still manages the tricky task of generating sympathy for the citizens while ridiculing the state. "The people who lived or had to live in the GDR are something completely different than the system of the GDR," says Becker. "I think it was consequently right that the GDR broke down because it was a perversion of the socialist ideal. For the word ‘democratic’ to be in GDR was just ridiculous. They took it seriously in the beginning but forgot about it very fast. In the end, the GDR had nothing to do with those good intentions... And the government kept telling people, ‘Socialism is the superior system, even if you can’t see that right now. Just wait another 10 years.’ It’s like the Catholic Church saying, ‘It’s very bad on Earth but if you come to Heaven, everything will improve… as long as you do what we say.’"
What Good Bye, Lenin! mocks is not Christiane’s faith but the system that demanded it. Alex’s well-intentioned but absurd conspiracy to dupe his mother reveals how deeply he was influenced by that system as well. An equal-opportunity satirist, Becker – a West German native who has lived in Berlin since 1974 – also pokes fun at the inane consumerism of his half of the country.
Nevertheless, the director insists that his film is not a matter of systems. "It’s just that there were a lot of interesting, intelligent people and good characters living in the GDR. And they have a right to have their positive memories, even if these memories come from a country and a time of dictatorship. It’s not good to tell people they lived their lives in vain only because they had the bad luck to live under the wrong circumstances." |
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