Bye Lenin! When One Views

¶ … Bye Lenin!

When one views a movie like Wolfgang Becker's Good bye Lenin, so much of how one interprets the movie is based on his/her perspective. To put it one way, for a proud, patriotic U.S. citizen, Good Bye Lenin is as foreign as a film gets. Foreign in a dualistic sense, both foreign in that it's a German film, and foreign in that it's strange for an American born citizen to fathom that someone would pine for a socialistic form of government. To most Americans, socialism is a misunderstood or ambiguous concept, meaning, to some socialism is the end of the free market, while to others, socialism is a political apparatus that ensures domestic equality. Yet, if one were to frame it in a broader context, and say, Good Bye Lenin is a movie that examines what it means to live through, cope with, and resist change, then I believe any individual, whether he/she is staunch free market supporter or a descendent of the red army, would appreciate the thematic merits of the film. In short, to fully appreciate Good Bye Lenin, one should acknowledge the political implications of the film, but also recognize that it's a story about the impact that change has on one's life.

In 1989 the German Democratic Republic transitioned from a sovereign socialistic nation to a capitalistic driven democracy when it was subsumed by West Germany. In eight short months the drab regalia of communism was traded in for the gaudy commercialism of the western world. Instead of buying Trabants and Spreewald pickles, people starting purchasing BMWs and imported pickles (from Holland). The GDR was gone and a new, unified Germany was emerging.

Becker's film takes place right at this pivotal time period. One of his main characters, a single mother and idealistic GDR loyalist, Christiane, suffers from a heart attack just as the revolution is beginning and winds up in a coma during the much of the upheaval. Eight months later, after the GDR has dissolved, she awakens. Her son, Alex (who serves as the narrator for the movie), is told by the doctor, "You must protect her from any kind of excitement." At this point the coma conceit is established, Alex must pretend the GDR is still in power in order to keep his lucid, but convalescing mother from being shocked by the tremendous change that has occurred.

To finish summarizing this movie, Christiane dies believing in the faux world Alex has created to keep her healthy. Essentially, she dies from a broken heart. And here's at least one point where Becker's film uses symbolism to enhance the drama of the film. The heart attack signifies several ideas. The first is Christiane's disillusionment in seeing her own son attend a pro-unification protest at the beginning of the film. She's so idealistic, in fact her one colleague describes her as being "too idealistic," that she can't stomach her own son protesting against the regime she's come to adore -- so she goes into cardiac arrest. Additionally she's broken hearted because, as the audience finds out later in the film, she's given up her marriage to stay in the GDR. She later recants stating, "That was the biggest mistake of my life."

The main storyline continues, but the tone of the film subtly shifts from a drama with comic relief to a full on drama as Alex continues to work to keep his mother safely deluded. One may object here and suggest that the use of the cosmonaut, turned taxi driver, as a head of state to deliver reunification news in a fake broadcast is funny, funny because the cosmonaut represented all the promise and progress of the GDR when Alex was growing up and to see him reduced to a menial profession in real life (cab driver), but a head of state in the faux world is a unique way of depicting the struggles of reality juxtaposed with the what-could-have-been in the faux world. But I disagree. I found it to be more socially incisive than humorous.

There are two ostensible reasons for the shift in tone, the first is the comedic element of the film that is fraught throughout the first two acts dissipates in the third act and the movie turns into a solemn drama. To explicate, what makes this movie funny are scenes like the one where Alex's sister Ariane takes a job working at Burger King. The high diction in the V.O. set against the visuals, Ariane in the trappings of a BK drive-thru yokel. Alex describes the scene as "She slept [his mother] while Ariane quit studying economic theory and gained her first practical experience with monetary circulation": insert image of her at drive-thru. In the new Germany gender roles are redefined in terms of corporatism and commerce, as opposed to be defined by the GDR's expectations and ideals for women and men.

There are other scenes where social and political change is rendered humorously. I think back to the beginning of the movie where Alex is marching in the pro-unification protest and starts choking on an apple or Alex's first romantic encounter with Lara, at some weird heavy metal club. And it's this blend of comedy and drama, and the tension between the two, that give the film its early vitality. By the third act, the humor is mostly gone, and the viewer must confront the real drama of the story, the looming death of a loved one.

The other reason the film turns more serious towards its conclusion is that Becker closes in on his characters with close-ups while protracting the drama of each scene. The scene at cabin comes to mind where Alex walks away, pensively, after his mother informed him of her betrayal -- country over family. Throughout the first two acts Becker does an incredible job at keeping the tempo upbeat, and the feel of the movie is fluid. With the use of speed frame camera shots, quick but timely edits, panorama shots of wreckage and crumbling buildings, and inter-spliced documentary footage, Becker recreates a captivating rendering of the post GDR environs.

Stephen Jolly from the Socialist Party in Australia writes about Becker's style: "Wolfgang Becker's skills in writing are matched by his director's eye for striking settings (like a fully furnished flat with an entire wall missing) and resonant images (like a brass torso of Lenin being lifted over a newly consumerist East Berlin by a helicopter -- a bittersweet homage to the similarly bittersweet opening shot of Fellini's 'La Dolce Vita', with its crucified Jesus on a helicopter above hedonist, consumerist Rome). The film combines fairytale elements with actual documentary footage, and the personal with the political, creating a contemporary allegory of the dreams and delusions upon which the lives of East Germans were sustained" (Film Gazette 1).

And by the third act most of these camera tricks and early style choices are gone and the movie, as mentioned, becomes more intimate and dramatic. The scenes are not brisk and fluid, rather they are long, drawn-out and in some instances intentionally awkward. The scene where Alex goes to meet his father is especially awkward, given the way he lurks into the house and sits next to his half-brother and half-sister only to be discovered by his father. In the earlier part of the movie, a scene like this would have used comedy to subvert the tension in the room, but instead, Becker wants his viewer to feel the discomfort, the awkwardness that exists between an estranged son and his father.

To revisit the idea of perspective, and how different individuals with different backgrounds view the politics of this film, it would be interesting to note that in reading reviews of the film, several critics interpreted the nature of Christiane's politics differently. For example, Roger Ebert describes Christiane in this way, "A loyal communist named Christiane (Katrin Sass) sees her son, Alex (Daniel Bruhl), beaten by the police on television, suffers an attack of some sort and lapses into a coma" (Ebert).