1. Brooke Murray-Carter
German Culture Through Film
Ingeborg Majer-O'Sickey
Good Bye, Lenin! Film Review
Paper #5
12/18/2012

2. Brooke Carter
Paper 5
12/18/2012
“Favorite of Film Festivals to Families: Good Bye, Lenin!”
An important geopolitical atmosphere developed while Allied occupation occurred in Germany
after WWII that helped result in the split of West and East effectively producing a nation caught in an
identity crisis as the western capitalist system had to engulf the eastern socialists. Given the difficult
and even bizarre situation of the peaceful reunification of Germany in 1989 some natural tensions
between the diverse cultures would of course prove problematic. How better to relate an awkward
collaboration between two distinct ideological systems than through a tear-jerking drama/comedy
dripping with a sarcasm so oblivious that it becomes an intricate and hilarious satire in Wolfgang
Becker's Good Bye, Lenin (2003)!
The Kerner family is introduced to the audience by the oblivious narrator and son Alex who
remarks first upon his cosmological aspirations to go to space, his father leaving to the west with his
enemy-of-the-state girlfriend, and then his mother who becomes dedicated to the socialist fatherland
after this crushing news. Alex Kerner (Daniel Bruhl) is the typical eastern German teenager who is put
in a conundrum when his beloved mother, Christiane (Katrin Sab), falls into a heart attack for eight
months during the period of 1989-90 after seeing him taking part in a protest against the communist
government. During the period of Christiane's coma the Iron Curtain falls and capitalism is put in affect
in the east; radically changing the lives of all Eastern Germans drastically from the simple such as
Spreewald pickles to a whole new western currency. Christiane awakens after this period but under the
risk of another heart attack if she receives any shock because of this Alex convinces his family, friends,
and girlfriend to keep up the ruse that the GDR still maintains the East to comfort his mother in her last
days.

3. Fitting in with other films such as The Lives of Others(2006) and Life is Beautiful (1997), Good
Bye, Lenin! incorporates an element of universality by incorporating a family structure attempting to
cope with a changing political world which they have no control over. This clever approach in applying
a tragic family's experience allows anyone to openly enjoy this film which will become an even richer
experience if you can get in on the inside cultural jokes that are making constant political commentary.
Coke's formula has been invented in East Germany; which is a lie that Alex perpetuates to his mother
through his self created news broadcasts and relays the continued theme of falsified reality. Becker also
makes reference to the disturbing appetite of consumers and downfall of communism to the rise of
capitalism in the sequence of Christiane's first walk outside of the apartment. She is dumbfound at the
advertisement, “Nazi” graffiti, and a crane helicopter hauling off the statue of Lenin in a very literal
transition of the title. The most dangerous form of propagandized material it would seem then would be
in the ones we create for ourselves.
This film could be seen as a romance or a drama that is among the favorites of film festivals but
can be enjoyed by any persons due to the family dynamics displayed.