East Germany, the year 1989: A young man protests against the regime.

His mother
watches the police arresting him and suffers a heart attack and falls into a coma. Some
months later, the GDR does not exist anymore and the mother awakes. Since she has to avoid
every excitement, the son tries to set up the GDR again for her in their flat. But the world has
changed a lot.
- Written by Benjamin Stello
Two traumatic events affect the life of East Berliner, Christiane Kerner. First, in 1978, her
husband, Robert, runs off to freedom and another woman in the west, leaving her to take care
of their two adolescent children, Ariane and Alex, by herself. Always a good Socialist,
Christiane devotes her life to the cause as a symbol of anger toward her husband. And second,
in 1989, she sees a now grown Alex marching in an anti-Berlin Wall demonstration and being
hauled off by police. As a result, she suffers a heart attack and goes into a coma. While
Christiane is in her coma, Germany drastically changes with the Wall coming down and the
imminent official reunification of East and West into one. The Kerner's personal life also
changes with all aspects of the new found capitalist world infiltrating their home. When
Christiane emerges from her coma eight months later, her health situation is still tenuous. Any
shock she experiences could possibly lead to another heart attack and certain death. To
protect his mother, Alex decides not to tell her of the new Germany in which they live. He
feels he can better protect her at home, where he can control to what she is exposed. Although
most around him don't support the idea - including Ariane and Lara (Alex's Russian
immigrant girlfriend who is also Christiane's nurse) - they go along with the extreme
measures Alex goes to to recreate East Germany in their home. How long can they keep up
the ruse?
- Written by Huggo
In 1990, to protect his fragile mother from a fatal shock after a long coma, a young man
must keep her from learning that her beloved nation of East Germany as she knew it has
disappeared.
- Written by Kenneth Chisholm

In a prologue, Alex Kerner (Daniel Brhl) recalls how proud he was as a child in 1978 when
the first German to fly in outer space was the East German Sigmund Jhn.
The remainder of the film is set in East Berlin, from October 1989 to just after German
reunification a year later. Alex lives with his sister, Ariane (Maria Simon), his mother,
Christiane (Katrin Sa), and Ariane's infant daughter, Paula. It appears that his father
abandoned the family and fled to the West in 1978. In his absence, Christiane has become an
ardent supporter of the ruling Socialist Unity Party of Germany (the Party). Alex takes part in
an anti-government demonstration, where he meets a girl by chance, but they are separated by
the Volkspolizei before they can properly introduce themselves. When Christiane sees Alex
being arrested, she suffers a near-fatal heart attack and falls into a coma. The police ignore
Alexander's plea to assist his mother. They release him later that evening to go and see her.

While visiting his mother in the hospital, Alex again encounters the girl from the
demonstration, Lara (Chulpan Khamatova), a young nurse from the Soviet Union who is now
caring for his mother. Alex is smitten with her and asks her out. The two soon begin dating
and develop a close bond.
Shortly afterward, the Berlin Wall falls. Erich Honecker resigns from office, and the East
German police and military become increasingly toothless. Capitalism comes to East Berlin.
Alex loses his job as a TV repairman, but is hired by a West German cable company. Alex is
paired with West Berlin resident Denis Domaschke (Florian Lukas), an aspiring filmmaker
with whom Alex quickly becomes good friends. Ariane leaves university to work at a Burger
King drive-through. After eight months, Christiane awakens from her coma, but she is
severely weakened both physically and mentally. Her doctor warns that any shock might
cause another, possibly fatal, heart attack. Alex realises that the discovery of recent events
would be too much for her to bear, and decides to maintain the illusion that things are as
before in the German Democratic Republic.
He, Ariane and Lara revert from the gaudy decor of the west to the drab decor they previously
had in the bedroom of their now bed-ridden mother in the family apartment, dress in their old
clothes, and feed Christiane new Western produce they repackage in old East German jars.
Their deception is successful, though increasingly complicated and elaborate. Christiane
occasionally witnesses strange occurrences, such as a gigantic Coca-Cola advertisement
banner unfurling on a building outside the apartment. With Denis's help, Alex edits old tapes
of East German news broadcasts and creates fake reports on TV that he plays from a video
machine hidden in an adjacent room to explain these odd events. As the old news shows were
fairly predictable, and Christiane's memory is vague, she is initially fooled.
Christiane eventually gains strength and wanders outside one day while Alex is asleep. She
sees all her neighbours' old furniture piled up in the street for rubbish collection and
advertisements for Western corporations. She also sees an old statue of Lenin being flown
away by a helicopter, which seems to reach out to her. However, Alex and Ariane quickly find
her, take her home, and show her a fake special report that East Germany is now accepting
refugees from the West following a severe economic crisis there. Christiane, initially
sceptical, finally decrees that as good socialists, they should open their home to these
newcomers. The family decides to go and inspect to their dacha in the countryside at
Christiane's suggestion.
While they are there along with Lara and Ariane's new Western boyfriend, Rainer (Alexander
Beyer), Christiane reveals her own secret; her husband had fled because the Party had been
increasingly oppressing him, and the plan had been for the rest of the family to join him in
West Berlin. However, Christiane, fearing the government would take Alex and Ariane away
from her if things went wrong, chose to stay in the East. She has come to regret the decision
over the years.
Christiane relapses shortly afterward and is taken back to the hospital. After meeting his
father, Robert (Burghart Klauner), for the first time in years, Alex sees that he has remarried
and fathered a second family, but welcomes meeting Alex again. Alex convinces Robert to
see Christiane one last time, stating he should say he was moved to return East to see his

dying wife. Under pressure to reveal the truth about the fall of the East, Alex creates a final
fake news segment, convincing a taxi driver whom he believes to be Sigmund Jhn to act in
the false news report as the new leader of East Germany and to give a speech promising to
make a better future including opening the borders to the West. However, it is suggested that
Christiane already knows the truth (Lara tried to convince her about the real political
developments earlier the same day). Nevertheless, she reacts fondly to her son's effort,
without mentioning anything.
Christiane dies peacefully two days later: she outlives the GDR, passing away three days
after full official German reunification. Alex, Ariane, Lara, Denis, and Robert scatter her
ashes in the wind using an old toy rocket Alex made with his father during his childhood.

91. Goodbye Lenin

2003, Germany

Director Wolfgang Becker Cast Daniel Bruhl, Katrin Sass, Chulpan Khamatova, Maria
Simon
Why so great? Subtle and delicately delivered humour is where Goodbye Lenin is at. The
main premise, that a son must pretend that the Berlin Wall is still up so that his mother, fresh
out of a 9-month coma, isn't shocked into a relapse, is one that had to be deftly handled, and
deftly handled it is. Though out-and-out farce could be on the cards, leading actor Daniel
Bruhl delivers the script with understated aplomb, making intentional audiences wonder
whether 'German comedy' was really a contradiction in terms after all. Hollywood remake?

No, and since the story is peculiarly German and Hollywood doesn't like films about
Communism, we're probably safe here. Prizes Cleaning up at the German film awards (it
went home with 6 in total), it only managed a nomination for Best Foreign Language Film
from the BAFTAs and the Golden Globes.
What to say... "The filmmakers had to use extensive CG to keep the surroundings timeappropriate, such is the change in Berlin since the fall of the wall." What not to say...
"Goodbye Lenin! has to be one of the greatest Russian films ever made."

Octombrie 1989 a fost un moment inoportun pentru coma in care a cazut mama
lui Alex, in Germania de Est. Cand, opt luni mai tarziu, aceasta se trezeste, Alex
va trebui sa-i evite orice soc mai important. El va transforma familia si
apartamanetul lor intr-o insula a trecutului, pentru a-i da mamei comuniste
impresia ca totusi Lenin a invins!

http://www.good-bye-lenin.de/ - site oficial al filmului care contine foarte multe informatii

http://www.sfgate.com/movies/article/The-wall-falls-but-his-mom-mustn-t-know2809533.php - articol al unui critic de film

http://www.seattlepi.com/ae/movies/article/Pathos-and-farce-are-comrades-in-arms-in-Good1139910.php - articol al unui critic de film

Goodbye, Lenin, * * * 1/2 (out of four) - TOT ARTICOL DIN CRITICA

Grown children protect mom from the political ravages of Burger King and Coca-Cola in a
comedy to prove that few, if any, screen premises are fatally outlandish if handled with care.
Though a Hollywood sledgehammer approach could really ruin this story, German
writer/director Wolfgang Becker turned it into a Golden Globe foreign-film nominee.
Long-abandoned by her husband for the West, an East German mother (Katrin Sass) devotes
her life to communism until she suffers a heart attack at a 1989 rally and falls into an eightmonth coma. When she awakens, the Berlin Wall has fallen. Her daughter (Maria Simon) is
pushing fast food, and her son (Daniel Bruhl) is selling satellite dishes that transmit news
broadcasts that'll do the frail recoveree no good.

So it becomes a madhouse staging and taping phony accounts (for mom's consumption) that
extol East German superiority and rationalize vastly increased traffic over the border. Harder
to explain, though, is that jumbo Coca-Cola logo on the building just outside mom's window.
This is a very funny picture, though it's never burlesqued and is, in fact, occasionally
poignant. Someday, it'll make a bouncy home-viewing double bill with Billy Wilder's 1961
farce One, Two, Three about the headaches endured by West Berlin's ace Coca-Cola rep.
(In New York and Los Angeles. R: brief language and sexuality) M.C.
TOT ARTICOL DIN CRITICA
In the east Germany of the '70S and '80s, Christiane (Katrin Sass) is a party-line do-gooder:
dashing off imploring memos for better working conditions as she glances at her wall icon of
Che Guevara. Her East Berlin neighbors may chafe under the drab dictatorship of the
proletariat, but she believes. Then she suffers a severe heart attack and falls into a coma,
regaining consciousness after eight months. A doctor urges Christiane's grown son Alex
(Daniel Bruhl) to shield her from any further shocks. Just one problem: it's 1989, and the
Wall has crumbled; communism is kaput. She'll die, literally, if she discovers that her socialist
dream has predeceased her. So, Alex, out of love and desperation, tries to keep the old East
Germany alive in her apartment. He rigs up their TV to a VCR and pipes in old news
broadcasts, hires kids to sing the party songs, does his best to explain away the huge CocaCola sign outside her window.
Good Bye, Lenin!, a huge hit in Germany and across Europe, may sound like sitcom stuff, a
wacky mistaken-identity plot inflated to national dimensions. In fact, as handled with expert
tenderness by director and co-writer Wolfgang Becker, the trope works splendidly as both
political metaphor and love story. If some Iraqis can look back with a twisted longing on the
more orderly days of Saddam's rule, why can't East Germans get a little misty over the
Honecker regime? As they do. It's called Ostalgie, or Eastalgia. The film taps the universal
suspicion that whatever Now is like, Then was better.
Mother love in movies is usually treated as an affliction (paging Norman Bates). Here, it's
Alex's expression of gratitude for the years Christiane devoted to raising him and an early
shouldering of the responsibility a son may assume when a parent declines and the child
becomes the caregiver. With the narrative briskness of Amelie and a nimble political savvy,
Good Bye, Lenin! is a romantic comedy so smart and sweetly mature, it's liberating.