Film review: Goodbye Lenin (dir. W. Becker, 2003)

This is a German movie about reunification, sort-of. More precisely about what East Germans lost in re-unification--a subject I'll return to in just a sec. The story follows Alex, a young man whose very idealistic mother falls into a coma just as East Germany is crumbling and reunifying with the West. Because his mother cannot suffer any shocks, when she regains consciousness Alex works hard to maintain the illusion that the East is still the East. The humor of the plot is that Alex has to go to outrageous lengths to maintain this illusion--although he is aided through most of the movie by the fact that his mother is bedridden.

The interesting part of the plot is the idea that East Germans lived their lives in the East, and that when their world was washed away, all of a sudden, they lost much of what made them what they were. It's easy for those of us in the west to think that people living under oppressive regimes are unhappy, but we should remember that human beings are incredibly adaptable, and that if you grow up in the Young Pioneers, many of your childhood memories will be of the Young Pioneers. A group that is different from the Boy Scouts, but maybe not as much as we often think, at least in terms of lived experience--camping, hiking, etc. So, the songs are about Communist youth and not "Oh Susannah." Even if people in such places are oppressed, they grow up, have favorite tv shows and foods, fall in love, make their mark in the world. When that world disappears, it is sad, even if things do get better in other ways. That's the thing I liked best about this movie.

Definitely worth a watch.