Good Bye, Lenin!
Good Bye Lenin! is a 2003 German tragicomedy film, directed by Wolfgang Becker. The cast includes Daniel Brühl, Katrin Sass, Chulpan Khamatova, and Maria Simon. The story follows a family in East Germany; the mother (Sass) is dedicated to the socialist cause and falls into a coma in October 1989, shortly before the November revolution. When she awakens eight months later in June 1990, her son (Brühl) attempts to protect her from a fatal shock by concealing the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of communism in East Germany. Most scenes were shot at the  Karl-Marx-Allee in Berlin and around Plattenbauten near Alexanderplatz. "Good Bye, Lenin!" received numerous honours, including 2003's European Film Award for Best Film and German Film Award for Best Fiction Film. Plot. The film is set in East Berlin, in the period from October 1989 to a few days after German reunification in October 1990. Alex Kerner lives with his mother Christiane, his sister Ariane, and her infant daughter Paula. Alex's father purportedly abandoned the family for a mistress in the West in 1978. His mother joined the Socialist Unity Party and devotes her time to advocating  for citizens. While Christiane believes socialism can improve Germany and the world, her children are cynical. Alex is disgusted with the celebration of East Germany's 40th anniversary and participates in an anti-government demonstration. There he meets a girl but they are separated by the "Volkspolizei" before they can introduce themselves. Christiane, seeing Alex being arrested and beaten, suffers a heart attack and falls into a coma because nobody initially comes to her aid. Visiting his mother in hospital, Alex finds that her nurse, Lara, is the girl from the demonstration. She and Alex begin dating shortly afterwards. Erich  Honecker resigns, Egon Krenz takes over, the borders are opened, the Berlin Wall falls, East Germany holds free elections, and capitalism comes to East Berlin. Alex begins working for a West German firm selling and installing satellite dishes. He befriends a western colleague, aspiring filmmaker Denis Domaschke. Ariane's university closes and she works at Burger King instead. She begins dating the 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 the profound societal changes from her and maintain the illusion that the German Democratic Republic is just as it was before her coma. He, Ariane, and Lara retrieve their old East German furniture from storage, dress in their old clothes, and repackage new Western food in old East German jars. The deception is increasingly complicated as Christiane witnesses strange occurrences, such as a gigantic Coca-Cola banner on an adjacent building. Denis and Alex create fake news broadcasts from old East German news tapes to explain these odd events. Alex and Ariane fail to find where Christiane keeps her  life savings (in East German marks) in time to exchange them for West German marks before the deadline. Christiane gets stronger and one day wanders outside while Alex is asleep. She sees her neighbours' furniture stacked in the street, new West German cars for sale, advertisements for Western corporations, and a statue of Lenin being flown away by helicopter. Alex and Ariane take her back home and show her a fake newscast explaining East Germany is now accepting refugees from the West following an economic crisis there. At the family dacha Christiane reveals her own secret; her husband had fled  not for a mistress but because his refusal to join the ruling party had made his life and job increasingly difficult, and the plan had been for the rest of the family to join him. Christiane, fearing the government would take her children if things went wrong, decided to stay. Contrary to what she had told her children their father wrote many letters which 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 in West Berlin. He convinces him 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 resembles cosmonaut Sigmund 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. Development. For director Wolfgang Becker, work on "Good Bye, Lenin!" began in the summer of 1999, but for screenwriter Bernd Lichtenberg, the work had already begun almost a decade earlier. Lichtenberg’s experience of the reunification period as a New West 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's "Life is All You Get" (German: "Das Leben ist eine Baustelle"). Especially interested in the mix of sadness and comedy, which he himself also envisaged for his film, he believed he had found the right person to bring his idea to life. He was not mistaken. "All of a sudden there was this energy", recalls producer Stefan Arndt during the recording of the 5-page synopsis with Becker. “We knew  we could tell the story in just the way we would like to.” 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. The role of Denis, who was previously conceived as an young overweight boy from Turkey who was to be married off against his will, became 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. Soundtrack. The film score was composed by Yann Tiersen, except the version of "Summer 78" sung by Claire Pichet. Stylistically , the music is very similar to Tiersen's earlier work on the soundtrack to "Amélie". 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 the Ernst Thälmann Pioneer Organisation, sing ""Unsere Heimat"" ('Our Homeland'). Friends of Christiane's (living in the same building) follow with """" ('Build Up! Build Up!'), another anthem of the Free German Youth. The final fake newscast with Sigmund Jähn features a rousing rendition of the East German national anthem, ""Auferstanden aus Ruinen"". Section::::"Ostalgie". Alex creates fictional newscasts to reminisce about  his earlier East German lifestyle as well as a communist environment. He goes out of his way to use East German products to fool his mother such as Spreewald gherkins and although this is for his mother, there is also a hint he himself is creating a fantasy in which he would like to live. Alex lived his whole life with this barrier; therefore the drastic change is hard for him unlike his older sister Ariane. Ariane quickly adopts the new Western ideals and lifestyle, but Alex experiences nostalgia for their former way of life. "Ostalgie" is a neologism for  the nostalgia for a communist past which is a common theme in "Good Bye, Lenin!" Alex shows signs of "ostalgie" when he begins to increasingly criticise the Western changes in themselves. In 2004 the "New York Times" commented on "Ostalgie" which was embodied in the town of Eisenhüttenstadt. It became popular because of "Good Bye, Lenin!" which imitated Christiane's bedroom. This put a lot of light on the "ostalgie" situation, in addition to the film. Reception. The film received strongly positive reviews, and has a rating of 90% on Rotten Tomatoes. "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." The magazine also ranked it 91st in "The 100 Best Films of World Cinema" in 2010. "Good Bye, Lenin!" is frequently contrasted with "The Lives of Others", which was released three years later, in 2006. Both films portray the legacy of East Germany, but with decidedly different tones. Accolades. "Good Bye, Lenin!" was submitted for consideration for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, but not nominated. Movie mistakes. In order not to distract from the narrative, Becker took great care to avoid  even the smallest of flaws in the film. This was not an easy challenge as they had to reconstruct a world that had largely been lost but was essential to the plot. With the help of a skilled crew, particularly that of set designer Lothar Hollar, the team mastered the task to the greatest possible extent. The few flaws that have been identified have to be differentiated as a) flaws named by the author himself, b) flaws not named by the author, c) purposely placed ones, and d) alleged ones. a) Daniel Brühl is left-handed. The actor portraying Alex  as a child, however, draws with his right hand. One of her father’s letters, which Ariana finds behind the fridge, is addressed to Christine Kerner instead of Christiane. When uncorking the champagne bottle after the German team won the semi-final of the Football World cup in 1990, Alex and Denis’s colleague wears a shirt from the 1994 World Cup. The next view from the Kerners’ apartment is anachronistic because at the time the film is set in neither the modern tram type GT6N nor any type of tram line existed there. b) The fake Sigmund Jähn is  wearing the wrong uniform when he takes office as Chairman of the State Council. He is in the uniform of an "oberst" (equivalent to a colonel), even though the real Jähn had already been a major general at the time. Christiane was ventilated through a tracheotomy during her coma, yet, when she wakes up she does not have a scar on her throat. Alex chauffeurs ex-director Klapprath to his mother’s birthday party. For a short moment there is a Mazda6 on the roundabout, which was first built in 2002. Several things which did not yet exist at this  time, either in this form or at all, for example, Blanchet red wine, plastic packaging of “Jacobs Krönung”, shopping bags from the Berlin supermarket chain Reichelt or the “Bankgesellschaft Berlin” (banking company of Berlin) at the Berolinahaus. c) Among the newspapers that reported the fall of the Berlin Wall in large print, was also one of "Libération" (a French newspaper). This was falsified on purpose because, in reality, the "Libération" was not published on this day due to a demonstration. d) The shirt, which Denis only wears once and which is designed in a “Digital Rain”-style, in clear reference to  the 1999 film "The Matrix". The reason for this is the original intention of the screenplay, that is to portray him as a cinematic visionary. In one scene, which was not included in the final version, he explains one of his film ideas (“"The Planet of the Forgotten"”) to Alex, which resembles the plot of "Matrix".