Goodbye, Lenin! Review
Wolfgang Becker’s high-concept comedy mines unexpected laughs from the fall of the Berlin Wall, and the results are both clever and hugely endearing.
As the eighties draw to a close, TV repairman Alex (Bruhl) finds himself increasingly frustrated with the limited opportunities and restricted freedom of East Germany under the Communist government. Alex’s mother Christiane (Sass) however, has become a staunch party faithful member, though trying to improve everyday life in her own small way. These two conflicting viewpoints collide when Christiane witnesses Alex clash with police on a protest march, the shock sending her into a deep coma. While she sleeps, the wind of change runs through Germany as the Berlin Wall falls and one reunified country is reborn. Eight months later Christiane awakes from her coma; but Alex is warned that any unexpected shock could prove potentially fatal. So Alex, with the help of his sister and nurse girlfriend, hatches an elaborate plan to fool his bed-ridden mother that nothing has changed, stocking up on dis-continued culinary delights and faking news bulletins with his friend.
Such a premise could have so easily become contrived, but Becker’s film never goes over the top and manages to balance its central conceit with touching moments of family interaction. That’s not to say there isn’t a fair share of laugh out loud moments, including one hysterical scene where Alex manages to convince his mother that Coca Cola was a Communist invention! The acting is first rate, Bruhl convincing in depicting Alex’s increasingly obsessive need to recreate the past, and Sass conveying a touching mix of love for her family and frustration at being forced to be so reliant on them. These are backed up with a nice array of supporting characters that subtly convey their own confusion about how much the country has changed, from an alcoholic teacher to a cosmonaut-cum-taxi driver.
The attention to detail in both setting and characters makes Goodbye, Lenin! a joy to watch. Becker has a great knack for visuals too, incorporating stylistic tricks like speeding up shots with memorable images of a country hit by rapid change, such as a succession of hastily abandoned apartment buildings or Alex scattering worthless currency to the wind. There’s a great scene where Christiane stumbles onto the streets to find advertising billboards plastered everywhere and a world she no longer recognises – in many ways this is a culture clash comedy, but one rooted in historical fact.
Some critics have criticised Goodbye, Lenin! for romanticising the repressive Communist era. Certainly the film is no angry polemic against state brutality, though there are plenty of sly digs at both the staid, sloganeering East and mercurial West. But this is a film about people not politics. The events are seen through the eyes of its characters, a family with inevitable conflicting emotions about the rapid change to a lifestyle they’ve grown up with. Any nostalgic longing in the characters isn’t for the repression of their old life, but for a reassuring routine of state-produced pickles and Trabant cars that has gone forever.
Becker does perhaps exhaust his idea slightly by the end, but luckily this is more than just a one-joke movie with characters that don’t simply exist to propel the laughs. After Enlightenment Guaranteed and Martha’s Kitchen, Goodbye, Lenin! is further proof, if any were needed that Germany is the source of some of the most hilarious and surprising comedy out there.
Wolfgang Becker’s high-concept comedy mines unexpected laughs from the fall of the Berlin Wall, and the results are both clever and hugely endearing.
As the eighties draw to a close, TV repairman Alex (Bruhl) finds himself increasingly frustrated with the limited opportunities and restricted freedom of East Germany under the Communist government. Alex’s mother Christiane (Sass) however, has become a staunch party faithful member, though trying to improve everyday life in her own small way. These two conflicting viewpoints collide when Christiane witnesses Alex clash with police on a protest march, the shock sending her into a deep coma. While she sleeps, the wind of change runs through Germany as the Berlin Wall falls and one reunified country is reborn. Eight months later Christiane awakes from her coma; but Alex is warned that any unexpected shock could prove potentially fatal. So Alex, with the help of his sister and nurse girlfriend, hatches an elaborate plan to fool his bed-ridden mother that nothing has changed, stocking up on dis-continued culinary delights and faking news bulletins with his friend.
Such a premise could have so easily become contrived, but Becker’s film never goes over the top and manages to balance its central conceit with touching moments of family interaction. That’s not to say there isn’t a fair share of laugh out loud moments, including one hysterical scene where Alex manages to convince his mother that Coca Cola was a Communist invention! The acting is first rate, Bruhl convincing in depicting Alex’s increasingly obsessive need to recreate the past, and Sass conveying a touching mix of love for her family and frustration at being forced to be so reliant on them. These are backed up with a nice array of supporting characters that subtly convey their own confusion about how much the country has changed, from an alcoholic teacher to a cosmonaut-cum-taxi driver.
The attention to detail in both setting and characters makes Goodbye, Lenin! a joy to watch. Becker has a great knack for visuals too, incorporating stylistic tricks like speeding up shots with memorable images of a country hit by rapid change, such as a succession of hastily abandoned apartment buildings or Alex scattering worthless currency to the wind. There’s a great scene where Christiane stumbles onto the streets to find advertising billboards plastered everywhere and a world she no longer recognises – in many ways this is a culture clash comedy, but one rooted in historical fact.
Some critics have criticised Goodbye, Lenin! for romanticising the repressive Communist era. Certainly the film is no angry polemic against state brutality, though there are plenty of sly digs at both the staid, sloganeering East and mercurial West. But this is a film about people not politics. The events are seen through the eyes of its characters, a family with inevitable conflicting emotions about the rapid change to a lifestyle they’ve grown up with. Any nostalgic longing in the characters isn’t for the repression of their old life, but for a reassuring routine of state-produced pickles and Trabant cars that has gone forever.
Becker does perhaps exhaust his idea slightly by the end, but luckily this is more than just a one-joke movie with characters that don’t simply exist to propel the laughs. After Enlightenment Guaranteed and Martha’s Kitchen, Goodbye, Lenin! is further proof, if any were needed that Germany is the source of some of the most hilarious and surprising comedy out there.
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