Film Review:

Goodbye Lenin!

Directed by Wolfgang Becker. Reviewed by Andrew Jackson

It is 1989 and Christiane Kerner, mother of two and decorated 
citizen of the German Democratic Republic (GDR — East Germany), 
has fallen into a coma. For eight months she lies in hospital, 
life support machines whirring and beeping, blissfully unaware of 
the turmoil and counter-revolution taking place outside.

When she wakens, the doctors warn her ever-faithful son Alex that 
her recovery may be only temporary, her heart so weak that shock 
or distress of any kind will certainly bring death.

How does Alex then protect his mother from the inevitable shock 
she will face on learning her beloved socialist homeland has been 
swept away?

Alex decides his mother mustn't know, and through elaborate set-
making, scheming and outright lying he sets about recreating a 
last insular pocket of GDR in their apartment.

As his mother's strength grows so does her suspicion that 
something is seriously amiss, and so Alex is forced to greater 
lengths and wilder concoctions to conceal the truth.

After the spate of ferociously anti-communist films made in 
Eastern Europe during the last decade, notably Burnt By The 
Sun and The Inner Circle, I certainly approached this 
film with great scepticism.

A reviewer for the UK Guardian saw the film as a damning 
indictment of East German Communism. "It is a farce, founded on 
dishonesty: like the old regime itself. And Alex has become the 
neurotic, control-freak prime minister, acting on behalf of an 
ageing, debilitated monarch."

However, the narrative created by the Guardian reviewer 
appears to have been the product of both an overactive 
imagination and his own hysterical anti-communism.

Goodbye Lenin! is certainly not pro-socialist, 
occasionally resorting to ridicule of GDR life and those who 
continued to believe.

The son strives to recreate the East German reality for his 
mother, but he is naturally unable to recreate the free health 
care or guaranteed employment and housing, and indeed the film 
ignores this aspect of GDR life.

It does remind us of the job losses that followed reunification, 
but by taking some of the "shortcomings" of GDR life (less 
consumer goods than in the West, for example) out of context it 
gives them undue emphasis.

Christiane's surprise that the family had been allocated a car 
"after only three years" is one of these moments.

However, the force used by the police against 1989 anti-
government protestors we see in the film pales against the lethal 
brutality meted out by the capitalist states in recent years 
against anti-capitalist protestors in Gothenburg, Seattle and 
Genoa.

But the film also captures the sense of great loss felt by Alex, 
his friends and neighbours — even those who embraced the West.

Alex is not alone in his deception, he quickly finds many who, 
for various personal reasons, are willing to participate in his 
charade.

As events escalate, Alex must even reassess his own motives: 
"Somehow, my scheme had taken on a life of its own. The GDR I 
created for her increasingly became the one I might have wished 
for".

Some reviewers have passed off the film's box-office success as 
part of the wave of "Ostalgia" (nostalgia by Easterners) 
currently sweeping Germany.

This term, however, is dismissive and perhaps patronising of the 
genuine and heartfelt yearning many people have for the life and 
culture they enjoyed in the GDR.

"Ostalgia" also dismisses those who continue to hold a firm 
belief in the socialist system.

How widespread this belief remains was demonstrated in a recent 
TV series and poll in which Germans were asked to vote for the 
"100 greatest Germans of history". In an upset result Karl Marx 
came in third.

Out of a list of 500 Germans to choose from, those living in the 
East (former GDR) gave a massive 40 percent of their votes to 
Marx, putting him in first place in four of the five Eastern 
states. At one point in the poll Marx lead the vote across the 
whole of Germany.

There is growing dissatisfaction amongst Easterners of their new 
life. Twenty percent unemployment and continuing wealth disparity 
with the West have awoken feelings of "perhaps our imperfect past 
was no so bad after all" .

T-shirts and flags with the GDR logo are displayed proudly on the 
streets; 400 films made in the East have been transferred to 
video and snapped up on both sides of the country. Consumer 
products of the East are reappearing on supermarket shelves 
bearing their familiar logos.

Whether this ostalgia reinvigorates the socialist movement and 
provides momentum carrying them forward to the restoration of 
socialism remains to be seen.

Those who bid "goodbye" to Lenin in 1989 perhaps should have said 
"until next time!"

Goodbye Lenin! opens in capital cities on Dec 26 at Dendy, 
Keno, Palace & Nova cinemas & selected independent theatres.