Bye Lenin the Film Good-Bye

¶ … bye Lenin The film "Good-bye Lenin" represents the unification of Germany. What does the disappearance of everyday culture mean for the citizens of the former GDR? How do personal and public histories intersect in the film? It was all a dream.' One of the oldest and least believable cinematic cliches is that of the 'dream sequence,' or worse, that of the protagonist who awakes from a long-standing coma to find that everything has changed.

Rip Van Winkle of Washington Irving fame is perhaps the most familiar example of this but "Goodbye Lenin," a 2003 German film directed by Wolfgang Becker shows that the cinematic uses of this humorous device need not seem trite in the eyes of modern viewers, when addressing contemporary issues.

The conceit of Rip Van Winkle, of course, is that a man falls asleep when England is still ruling America, and he awakes to find that saying "God save the King," in the new nation of America is no longer patriotic, as it once was not so long before. The march of historical events is often faster than the ability of human nature to shift perceptions, tastes, and preferences.

In the film, "Good-bye Lenin," set in East Berlin during the final days of domination by the Soviet block, a sickly, lonely woman named Christiane is nearly killed by the shock of seeing her son Alex beaten on television during the rioting that has taken over the streets of her city. Christiane, the film implies, is not simply worried that her son will be harmed, but also because he is rioting against the regime she supports.

After her husband left her for a girlfriend Christiane believed was an "enemy of the state," i.e. A Westerner, she threw all of her energies into raising her children -- and loving communism. Now Alex is demanding the fall of the Berlin Wall going against his mother, while she still believes in the ideals of communism, long after most of her fellow East Germans have seen through the lies.

Shaken with horror, Christiane falls into a coma and soon, swift, historical shocks that shake the formerly communist nation, resulting in the fall of the Berlin Wall. Christiane's daughter Ariane drops out of school, which largely teachers her outdated political cliches about communism, and gets a job with Burger King instead. The land is filled with images of commercialism and capitalism, from Burger King, to Coca-Cola, to large, shiny vehicles driving over from West Germany. The whole land changes, seemingly in a blink of an eye.

The furniture, food, and consumer goods all improve, and the old, tacky culture of Pioneers and state songs and media, is done away with. When Christiane awakes she is still very fragile, emotionally and physically, and the doctors fear that the slightest shock could kill her. To protect her, her children decide to shield her from the shock of what has just happened in her nation -- a nation that is of course no more, as the Eastern block is absorbed into the West.

Alex orchestrates the effort, despite his previous rioting in support of the overthrow of the East. Perhaps Alex takes the helm of the effort partially out of guilt -- after all, it was the sight of seeing him rioting against the East German police that caused Christiane's coma. Although he hates communism, he still loves his mother, and he knows that she sacrificed a great deal for him and his sister, when the two of them were growing up.

Also, she is the only parent he has, as Alex's father effectively abandoned the family, because of the allure of the West and a Western woman. While all of her children know that Christiane is a loyal communist, a lonely woman whose entire life revolved around the regime, the rest of society does not care, and does not 'wait' for Christiane.

Christiane believed in its ideals of nobility and self-sacrifice and she was willing to give up material comforts for the chance to feel she was a part of something larger than herself, something that meant more than mere consumerism. Also, she was told that was how a good person acted, by the media and all of the culture influences around her.

This is something, the film implies, that has been lost in the newly unified Germany, even though there was much to despise about the old regime, like its tyranny, shoddy goods, and the totalitarian mindset. Christiane's zealotry and love for her children is admirable, even while her admiration of communism is not.

When Christiane wakes, her son tells her that Eric Honecker is still in office, that consumer shortages are still rife, and despite the swelling amounts of goods on the shelves, he 'protects' her from the new influx of consumer goods from the West. He even shows her old television broadcasts where the state television still sings the praises of the regime. Gradually, creating this deception becomes more difficult, as Alex is driven to going through garbage and dumpsters to get old goods from the times of communism.

He fills old jars from the old times with new food. This shows how quickly things change -- goods are no longer scarce, except for the shoddy goods of East Germany. But it also is a frightening illustration of how minds and hearts, at least of the old, can be slower to change than the historical process itself. This is not simply true of East Germany, of course.

Everyone has an older relative or grandparent that resists change, and grows angry even when things become 'better' -- like the relative who refuses to switch from cassettes to CDs or downloadable music, because it all seems too confusing, too much of a shock.

As Alex is trying to shield his mother from an entire world-change, not simply some consumer goods, his deceptions spawn more deceptions, as his efforts grow more and more difficult to practice, despite the fact that Christine has only been in a coma for a few months. The old and decaying architecture is being replaced by new images of consumerism as fast as people can assemble the goods. Trabants, the poorly made, tiny communist cars that Christiane once dreamed to own, are rapidly vanishing.

There are no more border guards marching back and forth with rifles. For awhile, this doesn't stop Alex -- Alex even acquires a Trabant to take his mother on a picnic, dresses up children as young Pioneers, getting others to go along with the ruse. His mother is mystified that he was able to get a car so quickly, as it usually takes three years of waiting time and charmed by the patriotic songs sung by the Pioneers that Alex hires for pay. His ruses grow more elaborate.

Not just using old footage, Alex even produces fake newscasts that mimic the old regime, and when Christiane sees advertisements for Coca-Cola and other Western products outside, he says that an East German firm now controls the American company because a patent dispute has been won. He enlists an old cosmonaut in one of his fake videos.

While Christiane is in convalescence at the apartment, the deception is a bit easier to construct, because she is bedridden, so Alex simply changes the furniture in her room back to how it was -- unlike everyone else in the apartment blocks around them who has updated the old styles.

But it is one thing to feed her products with labels from the state supermarket except for those new products he can create lies about, like Coca-Cola, and another to take her out in a world where he cannot lie fast enough to keep pace with the changes. As he watches the fake, old newscasts, with his mother it is almost as if Alex has superimposed a kind of state tyranny, out of love and paternalism, on his frail mother.

Alex even creates doctored photographs and videos, something he can expertly do, given he has a job at a media company. In one shot, he reverses the trajectory of people streaming in from the East to the West, as if West Germans want to escape the shallowness of their lives into the harmony of the East block. This suggests, metaphorically, that some people did experience a loss -- not of misery and deprivation, but of a sense of something greater than capitalism can provide.

Neither side, in and of itself, seems entirely 'complete' -- as horrible as East German life may have been, the artifacts of Coca-Cola and Burger King do not necessarily shine as pure, entirely better alternatives. But there is something unsettling about Alex's enthusiastic control over his mother's sources of information. Once a democrat, given the power over an elderly person, the child becomes a tolerant. Creating a false news broadcasts becomes almost a game for Alex, despite his Western sympathies.

"Without knowing it, Alex has mobilized almost every agency of a communist state. He distorts and concocts the news media; he coerces people into acting against their real natures and principles by a mixture of bullying and emotional blackmail, manipulating their loyalty to a 'leader' figure. 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" notes Peter Bradshaw, the film reviewer.