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Goodbye, Lenin (2004)
Director:
Wolfgang Becker
Genre:
Drama, Comedy, Historical
Studio:
Sony Pictures Classics
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"You can see how quickly you can fake things with a picture and a slightly altered commentary -- which makes you doubt whether the pictures were ever completely truthful in their original context and how much truth is to be found in pictures anyway."
- Director Wolfgang Becker on false newscasts created in "Goodbye, Lenin!"
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On the surface, "Goodbye, Lenin!" plays like a lengthy sitcom episode. In order to save their mother from a potentially fatal shock after she awakes from a heart-attack induced coma, and East German family is forced to pretend that The Berlin Wall has not fallen, re-unification is not occurring and that the spread of capitalism has not permeated throughout the former socialist state.
It's a tall order to be sure. As one might expect, the family is forced to go to ridiculous and comical lengths to keep up the ruse - placing new, imported pickles into old, abandoned jars from inferior socialist brands, wearing unnecessarily threadbare clothing, even creating newscasts that play on the mother's TV in order to keep up the old, absurd socialist stories.
There is real beauty here, though, as the rubble of the old society serves as a sort of playground for the film's young, lovestruck lead Alex (Daniel Brühl) and his Russian girlfriend Lara (Chulpan Khamatova). The couple weaves gleefully throughout the jungle of Berlin's club scene and the remnants of a culture and location largely (and at times literally) abandoned by its inhabitants. The celebratory spirit of German Re-Unification and a concurrent German World Cup Championship brings fireworks and sporadic, unexpected moments of joy and visual grandeur to the film.
Director Wolfgang Becker liberally doses his film with archival footage from the period, a wise decision considering the sheer visceral impact of the imagery surrounding the destruction of the oppressive Berlin Wall. Combined with old footage of East German Cosmonauts in space, cartoons, and the 1990 World Cup, the film serves as both an homage to the former East Germany and a celebration of its absorption into a greater nation.
"Goodbye, Lenin!" was produced by X Filme Creative Pool, a German collective including the film’s director Wolfgang Becker, Stephan Arndt, Dani Levy and "Run Lola Run" and "Heaven" director Tom Twyker. The group of young filmmakers is producing some of the most exciting and stylistically interesting work in contemporary cinema, with "Goodbye, Lenin!" being no exception.
The film has won numerous awards, from Best European Film at the Berlin Film Festival to an Official selection at this year's Sundance. Larger than life and emotionally engaging, "Goodbye, Lenin!" is well worth a visit to the Music Box.
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Written by Richard Sharp,br>
Review Date: March 26, 2004
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