Good bye Lenin: satire of communism and capitalism at the wall's fall

¶ … Bye Lenin!

Summary of the Film

This film is as much historically relevant as it is entertaining. It takes place around the time of the dramatic collapse of the Berlin Wall in 1989. Christiana, a devoted socialist, falls into a coma after watching her son Alex -- who, with his sister Ariane, shares an apartment with their mother -- severely beaten during a protest against the communist authorities in East Berlin. The coma keeps Christiana out of touch with events during the time the Berlin Wall falls. But when she comes back to consciousness, doctors advise Alex and Ariane to be careful not to shock her or surprise her, so they carry out an elaborate ruse to trick their mother. The trick is that the Wall has not come down and that things are still being controlled by the German Democratic Republic (GDR). When Christiana steps outside and wonders why so many westerners are there are why there are advertisements for western products (like Coke), her son and his pal Denis (working at a store that sells satellite systems) conjure up fake newscasts that tell the opposite story from what is really happening -- that the West is falling apart and people are flocking to East Germany. As Roger Ebert noted, the movie is "…filled with references and in-jokes we do not quite understand…but the central idea travels well" (Ebert, 2004).

The geographic locations and aspects depicted in the film

As to a comprehensive example of "place" in the film, one example is when Alex and Lara find a deserted place in a dilapidated building -- there certainly were thousands of such places abandoned after many East Berliners fled to the West. And Alex says to his girlfriend (they are discussing Alex's mother missing all the changes), "Everything she believed in vanished in just a few months," which is basically the theme of the film. This scene is very helpful for film goers because it reflects the bombed-out kind of war zone images that surely were evident during those years.

When Alex tries to find out what his father looked like, his sister says she saw him at the Burger King. He wore gold rimmed glasses and drove a Volvo. That's not a very specific description; but she also said he eats cheeseburgers, so the director cuts to a scene of a very morbidly obese man stuffing a triple cheeseburger into his fat face. The place that the cheeseburger man is in seems quite opulent, and Alex says, "He lived in his world, and I lived in mine." This is poignant because throughout the movie Alex has indicated that he wants to know something about his father.

Another scene that relates to the geographic portion of the movie is Alex roaring along on a motor bike, saying life in East Berlin was moving faster and faster, "We were all like tiny atoms in a huge particle accelerator." But his mother, now well out of her coma, is in an entirely different place, at home, eating pickles. The narrator (Alex) then says, while video shows his mother eating a pickle, "But sheltered from the fast pace of the new time was an oasis of calm."

In other words, the real geographical world outside was adopting to the radical changes that happened as a result of the smashing of the Berlin Wall; but in the cocoon of a world that Christiana lived in, it was still very slow and deliberate. And as grandma (Christiana) is able to walk, and her granddaughter is also able to walk, Christina ventures outside of the little flat and realizes that the world has changed a great deal.

The geography has changed. Her world has changed. She sees an IKEA logo and she walks over in front of a billboard for a western made car and a helicopter flies by with a broken statue of Lenin swinging just over her head. This is a turning point in the story. When Alex sees his mother (with the broken statue of Lenin swinging in the picture) he knows the ruse has been discovered. The landscape in those frames while Lenin is passing over head, and then into the sunset, is as poignant a moment as this film offers.

My own opinion as to the depth of the realism vis-a-vis the geography of the film is that it is vaguely reminiscent of the real East Berlin, but the film is far more about the characters than it is about place, or politics. Yes, the wall came down, and life changed, but this story is a satire, not a documentary. The audience does get a glimpse of the terror of communism, but it is only a backdrop to the story of a son and his sister and how they tried to trick their mom because they love her so much; they tried to keep her believing in the old ways so she would not freak out coming out of her coma. It is also a story about guilt; his efforts to "protect her are partly out of guilt" because Alex knows his being busted by the East German police caused his mother to have the heart attack (About.com). Hence, I believe the geography really didn't matter that much; the movie could have been filmed anywhere and made to fit into the plot.