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GOOD BYE, LENIN! Send This Review to a Friend
Traumatic times provide a source for comedy in Wolfgang Becker's funny and satirical "Good Bye, Lenin!" The film, shown at the 2003 Toronto International Film Festival and now in commercial release, is an imaginative riff on life in East Germany. It concerns Christiane (Katrin Sass), a woman who is dedicated to the Communist regime, in fact more than dedicated--an impassioned partisan ready to swallow whatever she is fed. An accident leaves her in an extended coma. When she awakens but is still bedridden the Berlin wall has been brought down and East and West have fused. But her son Alex (Daniel Brühl) doesn't have the heart to let her learn what has happened and shatter her illusions.
Alex and his congenial co-conspirators create a phony world of the old East German reign by means of artifacts in the apartment and by fashioning fake television news broadcasts, which his mother can watch from her bed. The most uproarious scene occurs when the wall is breached and the commentator describes the momentous event in distorted reverse.
In the phony broadcast people from the West are depicted as stampeding to the East to enjoy the benefits of Communism instead of the other way around. Will mom die with the serene impression that all is well in her Communist paradise? One can see why the film would be a hit in Germany, but its charm and humor, as well as its take on the political illusions that people nurture, should strike a chord virtually anywhere. A Sony Pictures Classics release.
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