| Good Bye, Lenin! | |
|---|---|
 Theatrical release poster | |
| Directed by | Wolfgang Becker |
| Written by |
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| Produced by | Stefan Arndt |
| Starring | |
| Cinematography | Martin Kukula |
| Edited by | Peter R. Adam |
| Music by |
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Production company | |
| Distributed by | X Verleih AG (throughWarner Bros.[1][2]) |
Release date |
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Running time | 121 minutes |
| Country | Germany |
| Language | German |
| Budget | DM 9.6 million (€4.8 million) (approx.$6.5 million) |
| Box office | $79 million |
Good Bye, Lenin! is a 2003 Germantragicomedy film, directed byWolfgang Becker. The cast includesDaniel Brühl,Katrin Sass,Chulpan Khamatova, andMaria Simon. The story follows a family inEast Germany; the mother is dedicated to the socialist cause and falls into a coma in October 1989, shortly before thePeaceful Revolution in November. When she awakens eight months later in June 1990, her son attempts to protect her from a fatal shock by concealing thefall of the Berlin Wall and thecollapse of Communism in East Germany.[3]
Most scenes were shot at theKarl-Marx-Allee in Berlin and aroundPlattenbau buildings nearAlexanderplatz.Good Bye, Lenin! received numerous honours, including 2003'sEuropean Film Award for Best Film andGerman Film Award for Best Fiction Film.[4][5]
The film is set inEast Berlin, in the period from October 1989 to a few days afterGerman reunification in October 1990.
Alex Kerner lives with his mother Christiane, his sister Ariane, and Ariane’s infant daughter Paula. Alex's father purportedly abandoned the family for a mistress inthe West in 1978. His mother joined theSocialist Unity Party and devoted her time to advocating for citizens. Alex is disillusioned by thecelebration of East Germany's 40th anniversary and participates in ananti-government demonstration. There he meets a girl, but they are separated by theVolkspolizei before they can introduce themselves.
Christiane, seeing Alex being arrested and beaten, suffers aheart attack and falls into acoma because nobody initially comes to her aid. Visiting his mother in the hospital, Alex finds that her nurse, Lara, is the girl from the demonstration. She (an exchange student from theSoviet Union) and Alex begin dating shortly afterward.
Erich Honecker resigns,Egon Krenz takes over, theborders are opened, theBerlin Wallfalls, East Germany holdsfree elections, andcapitalism comes to East Berlin. Alex begins working for a West German firm selling and installingsatellite dishes. He befriends a Western colleague, aspiring filmmaker Denis Domaschke. Ariane drops out of university, where she studied economics, and begins working atBurger King, dating her manager (Rainer, who moves into their apartment).
After eight months, Christiane awakens from her coma. Her doctor warns her family that she is still weak and any shock might cause another, possibly fatal, heart attack. Alex resolves to conceal theprofound societal changes from her and maintain the illusion that theGerman Democratic Republic is just as it was before her coma. He retrieves their old East German furniture, makes everyone in the flat dress in old, East German clothes, and repackages new Western food in old East German jars. The deception becomes increasingly complicated as Christiane witnesses strange occurrences, such as a giganticCoca-Cola banner on an adjacent building. Denis and Alex createfake news broadcasts in the style of oldEast German news tapes to explain these odd events. Alex and Ariane fail to find where Christiane keeps her life savings (inEast German marks) in time to exchange them forWest German marks before the deadline.
Christiane gets stronger and one day wanders outside while Alex is asleep. She sees her neighbours' old East German furniture stacked in the street, new West German cars for sale, advertisements for Western corporations, and a statue ofLenin being flown away by helicopter. Alex and Ariane take her back home and Alex shows her a fake newscast explaining East Germany is now accepting refugees from the West following aneconomic crisis there. Ariane tells Alex she is pregnant with Rainer's baby; it will be half East German and half West German, a symbol of the new Germany.
At the familydacha Christiane reveals her secret: her husband had fled not for a mistress but because of the difficulties he faced for refusing to join the ruling party. The plan had been for the rest of the family to join him. Christiane, fearing thegovernment would take her children if things went wrong, decided to stay. Contrary to what she had told her children, their father wrote many letters that she hid. As she declares her wish to see her husband one last time to make amends, she relapses and is taken back to hospital.
Alex meets his father, Robert, who has remarried, has two children, and lives inWest Berlin. He convinces Robert to see Christiane one last time. Under pressure to reveal the truth about the fall of the East, Alex creates a final fake news segment, persuading a taxi driver (who strongly resembles cosmonautSigmund Jähn, the first German in space and Alex's childhood hero) to act in the false news report as the new leader of East Germany and to give a speech about opening the borders to the West. However, unbeknownst to Alex, Lara had already recounted the true political developments to Christiane earlier that day.
Christiane dies two days later, outliving the German Democratic Republic by three days after German reunification. The family and friends scatter her ashes in the wind using a toy rocket Alex made with his father during childhood.
For director Wolfgang Becker, work onGood Bye, Lenin! began in the summer of 1999,[6] but for screenwriter Bernd Lichtenberg, the work had already begun almost a decade earlier. Lichtenberg's experience of thereunification period as a NewWest Berliner at a similar age to his protagonist Alex was formed into a story which already included many aspects of the later film, but first ended up "in the drawer" for a few years. He stated: "I had the feeling that it simply wasn't the right time yet." This only changed when he saw Becker'sLife Is All You Get (German:Das Leben ist eine Baustelle). Especially interested in the mix of sadness and comedy, which he also envisaged for his film, he believed he had found the right person to bring his idea to life.[7] "All of a sudden there was this energy", recalls producerStefan Arndt; when he and Becker read the 5-pagesynopsis, "right then we knew exactly we could tell everything that we so badly had wanted to tell".[8]
Nevertheless, it was not an easy process to finish the script. It supposedly took them six drafts plus a few interim versions to complete the script. Lichtenberg wrote the first drafts by himself. He stayed in close contact with Becker who voiced his criticism, especially of the characters. This was an important point for both of them so it was one they argued over as they both wanted to tell the story "through the characters". The character that underwent the most radical change was Denis, as he was changed from a main character to a side character. Initially conceived as a young overweight boy from Turkey who was to be married off against his will, he was changed into an amateur film maker, who is as boldly imaginative as he is practical. After completing the script, which the screenwriter and producer worked on together towards the end, their collaboration was not over. During the actual filming, Lichtenberg was involved whenever Becker wanted more changes.[7][9]
Thefilm score was composed byYann Tiersen, except the version of "Summer 78" sung byClaire Pichet. Stylistically, the music is very similar to Tiersen's earlier work on thesoundtrack toAmélie. One piano composition, "Comptine d'un autre été : L'après-midi", is used in both films.
Several famous East German songs are featured. Two children, members of theErnst Thälmann Pioneer Organisation, sing "Unsere Heimat" ('Our Homeland'). Friends of Christiane's (living in the same building) follow with "Bau Auf! Bau Auf!" ('Build Up! Build Up!'), another anthem of theFree German Youth. The final fake newscast with Sigmund Jähn features a rousing rendition of the East German national anthem, "Auferstanden aus Ruinen".
Alex creates fictional newscasts to fool his mother with their earlier East German lifestyle and Communist environment. He goes out of his way to use East German products, such asSpreewald gherkins, to deceive his mother and create a fantasy. His older sister Ariane quickly adopts the new Western ideals and lifestyle, but it is not so easy for Alex.Ostalgie is a German neologism for nostalgia for some aspects of life in former East Germany, which is a common theme inGood Bye, Lenin! Alex shows signs ofOstalgie when he begins to increasingly criticise the Western changes in themselves.[10]
German-American historianAndreas Daum has suggested a new interpretation, moving beyond the paradigm ofOstalgie. He argues that Alex's efforts to present his mother with an alternate narrative of what happened during her coma are not meant to preserve a bygone state or falsify history. Instead, they use counterfactual history to cope with the unsettling experience of dramatic change. Alex's charades are conduits that allow all characters, including himself, to move from what they have been familiar with toward a new future. In this view,Good Bye, Lenin! does not reflect a nostalgic attachment to the past, nor its retrospective idealization, but the film demonstrates a creative way of handling societal transformations, even beyond the specific East German setting.[11]
The film received generally favorable reviews. It has a rating of 91% onRotten Tomatoes and a score of 68 out of 100 onMetacritic based on 32 critics.[12]Empire magazine gave the film four stars out of five, saying: "An ingenious little idea that is funny, moving and—gasp!—even makes you think."[13] The magazine also ranked it 91st in "The 100 Best Films of World Cinema" in 2010.[14]
It was a box office success in both parts of Germany and its release caused a new wave ofOstalgie, which was exploited by movie theatres, with employers donned inFree German Youth shirts and red scarves, as well as businesses selling GDR memorabilia and books, music, and games of theOssi era.[15]
Good Bye, Lenin! is frequently contrasted withThe Lives of Others, which was released three years later, in 2006. Both films portray the legacy of East Germany, but with decidedly different tones.[16][17][18]
Good Bye, Lenin! was submitted for consideration for theAcademy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, but not nominated.[19]
An unofficial spiritual Indian remake ofGood Bye, Lenin! was released 17 years later in the form of theHindi-language comedy-dramaDoordarshan, also referred to by its changed titleDoor Ke Darshan; written and directed by Gagan Puri, it explores a family's attempts to recreate a bygone era to prevent the family matron from suffering a shock when she recovers 30 years after having fallen into coma.
In Japan,Masaki Aiba of the music groupArashi will play the role of Alex in the stage version scheduled for Spring 2025.[29]
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