Goodbye, Lenin!

Good Bye, Lenin! is a 2003 German film directed by Wolfgang Becker, whose cast includes Daniel Brühl, Katrin Sass, and Chulpán Jamátova. Most of the scenes were taken in the Karl-Marx-Allee in Berlin and around the Plattenbauten near the Alexanderplatz.

Plot

October 7, 1989 was not the best time to fall into a coma living in the German Democratic Republic, and that is precisely what happens to the mother of Alexander Kerner (Daniel Brühl), Christiane, a woman proud of his socialist ideas and a member of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany. She devoted to politics after the abandonment and flight of her husband to West Germany, she loses consciousness when she sees her son involved in a riot following a demonstration against Erich Honecker, with the state policy that she admires so much

Alex finds himself in a sticky situation when his mother comes out of a coma eight months later. Nothing else could affect his mother as much as the fall of the Berlin Wall and the triumph of capitalism in his beloved East Germany, and already warned by the doctor to leave her at rest and without major upsets, to avoid a possible relapse, he will hide his mother what happened while she was sick: the Berlin Wall has been torn down and German reunification has been carried out under the command of the capitalist West Germany. To do this, Alex, with the help of his friend Denis (an aspiring filmmaker from West Berlin), will set up a series of fake newscasts, in which he will write his own history of the country.

So, to save his mother, Alex turns the family apartment into an island anchored in the past, a kind of last bastion of socialism in which his mother lives believing that nothing has changed. What starts out as a white lie turns into a huge scam when Alex's sister and some neighbors take it upon themselves to keep up the charade so that Alex's mother continues to believe that nothing has changed. One of them is Lara, a Soviet nurse trainee with whom Alex falls in love during his mother's coma.

Some events make Christiane doubt what happened: she discovers that a huge Coca Cola advertising billboard is displayed in front of her window and then she sees that a statue of Lenin is moved from its pedestal. As soon as she can go out into the streets, Christiane discovers that her neighbors have bought new furniture and that they do not use the typical GDR furniture, so Alex must invent new lies to avoid a great upset to her mother. To relax the family, Alex takes Christiane, her sister, and her boyfriend on a picnic, where Alex learns that their father, Robert, tried to flee to West Germany with his entire family in 1978 but Christiane feared. losing her children if the plan failed, for which at the last moment she refused to accompany her husband, which she later regretted. Shortly after Christiane suffers a new heart attack and is admitted to the hospital, a situation that Alex takes advantage of to falsify a new newscast: this time he convinces Sigmund Jähn (the first East German astronaut) whom he discovers working as a taxi driver, to get pass for the new "president of the GDR" and with his speech he proclaimed "the need to unite with West Germany"; in order to gently put an end to the lies created to care for Christiane.

However, during her hospital stay, Lara reveals to Christiane all the political transformations of the last few months. Shortly before she died, watching one of Alex's last fake newscasts, Christiane is aware of the show that her son has prepared for her out of love; Moved by Alex's determination to create a parallel reality just so as not to upset her, Christiane refuses to reveal that she already knows the reality of the facts.

As a side plot, the film reveals the true story of Alex's father and his reunion with his son.

In turn, the film criticizes the state socialism of the GDR (full of paraphernalia, bureaucracy and militarism), as well as the capitalism implanted in East Germany after the fall of the wall. He situates the central character as a man who vacillates between his youthful rebellion and his observations of the time after the fall of the wall: the first are made in a concrete way, for example, showing the violence carried out by the GDR police during the demonstrations and Christiane's blind veneration for the symbols and ideology of the regime, while the latter are verified from a somewhat more ironic level, for example, when Alex creates an oxymoron between the pornographic film, which is broadcast in a store on the west side of Berlin, and the concept of culture, critical reference is also made to FRG unemployment and junk food companies, particularly Burger King, when the protagonist's sister drops out of college to work in a hamburger joint.

Cast

• Daniel Brühl as Alexander "Alex" Kerner
  • Nico Ledermüller as Alex (at age 11)
• Katrin Saß as Christiane Kerner
• Chulpan Khamatova as Lara
• Maria Simon like Ariane Kerner
• Florian Lukas as Denis Domaschke
• Alexander Beyer as Rainer
• Burghart Klaußner as Robert Kerner
• Michael Gwisdek like Klapprath
• Christine Schorn as Frau Schäfer
• Jürgen Holtz as Herr Ganske
• Jochen Stern as Herr Mehlert
• Ernst-Georg Schwill as a Tax driver
• Stefan Walz as a Taxist
• Eberhard Kirchberg as Dr. Wagner
• Hans-Uwe Bauer as Dr. Mewes

Soundtrack

The film score was composed by Yann Tiersen, except for the version of "Summer 78" sung by Claire Pichet. Stylistically, the music is very similar to Tiersen's earlier work on the Amélie soundtrack. A piano composition, 'Comptine d'un autre été: L'après-midi', is used in both films.

Several famous GDR songs are also featured in the film. Two children, members of the Ernst Thälmann Pioneer Organization, sing Unsere Heimat (Our Homeland). Christiane's friends (who live in the same building) continue with Bau Auf! Bau Auf! (Build! Build!), another anthem of the Free German Youth. The latest fake news with Sigmund Jähn presents a rousing rendition of the GDR national anthem Auferstanden aus Ruinen.

Information

• Direct Wolfgang Becker (North Rhineland (Germany), 1954) whose filmography is composed of films Schmetterlinge (1987) and Life in works (1997) among others. He is also the author of the episode of the television series Tatort entitled Blutwurstwalzer (1991) of the documentary Celibidache (1992) and telefilm Kinderspiele (1992).
• His protagonists are Daniel Brühl, born in Barcelona (Spain) and son of Spanish mother and German father; Katrin Saß; Chulpán Jamátova (Spain)All for success, Papa, Tuvaluand the almost debutant Mary Simon.
• The script is written by the director himself in collaboration with the debutant Bernd Lichtenberg.
• The director of photography is Martin Kukula, who already worked with Becker in Life in works, and the soundtrack is composed of Yann Tiersen (Amélie).
• One of the secondary characters in the plot is the astronaut and myth in the RDA Sigmund Jähn, although it did not end up as a taxi driver after reunification (as indicated by the film), but as a consultant to the DLR (Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt) or German Space Agency, heir to the former West, and later to the ESA or European Space Agency.
• Alex's mother's apartment is located in the Berlin district of Friedrichshain. Also much of the scenes were recorded in this district - including one of the most important, when Alex's mother decides to leave the apartment. In spite of this, Denis only mentions Friedrichshain in the news mounted after that scene.

Awards

• He was presented at the Berlin International Film Festival in 2003 where he got the Angel Azul Award for the best European film.
• He won the Special Jury Prize at the Valladolid Film Festival in 2003.
• He won the European Film Awards 2003 to better movie, actor (Daniel Brühl) and screenplay, as well as all the public awards (film, actor and actress, the latter by Katrin Saß). 6 awards including better movie. 8 nominations.
• 2003: Nominated UK Film Awards BAFTA Awards: Best non-English-speaking film
• 2003: Award for Best Non-English-speaking Film
• 2002: 7 German Film Awards (Deutscher Filmpreis): including better film and director
• 2004: Goya Prize winner Goya Award for Best European Film
• 2004: Caesar to the best film in the European Union