Just months before the fall of the Berlin Wall, Kathrin Sass (Katrin Saß), a staunch Socialist living in East Germany, fell into a coma one day when she saw her son, Alex (Daniel Brühl), getting caught and beaten up by police in a street demonstration. What follows was an entire string of events that led to the collapse of the Berlin Wall and the transformation of East Germany towards captitalism. In a short span of barely a year, the Socialist ideals that once ruled the East were almost all completely gone, leaving the old helpless and the young embracing McCapitalism with glee. However, for Alex, there was just one problem - his mother had slept through the entire transformation. By the time she woke up, doctors warned Alex and his sister, Ariane (Maria Simon), that their mother was not to be exposed to any form of excitment. How would they tell their mother of the collapse of her beloved socialism and the reunification of East and West Germany?

Alex's solution? To recreate the socialist world in the bedroom where Kathrin would be confined to and to distort novel events such as the appearance of a Coca Cola banner in front of his mother's room in part by saying that 'researchers found that Coca Cola was an Eastern invention" through self-made newsreels. While the whole of Germany moves foward, Alex finds himself moving backwards. Yet even as Alex struggles to retrieves East German pickles that are no longer in production (his mother had a sudden craving for the particular brand of pickles), he unwittingly turns the 'socialist' world into one that would be warm and affectionate, and that would be co-existing successfully with the West. As the movie goes on, it exposes more, such as the reunification of the family itself, once torn apart by the divide.

Who would have thought that Germany would produce such an excellent film? Having been exposed to only mainly English and Chinese movies, I definitely did not. Definitely a gem and a must-watch! I watched it on cable a few days ago when Ch 56 was having its 'foreign film' fest. I read the synopsis decided that the premise was intriguing enough to watch.

I've studied about the fall of the Berlin Wall but apart from textbook knowledge, I was obviously quite distant from the emotional aspect of the exact events. Although I'm unsure as to whether the reunification was accurately portrayed or now, the fact that this movie was an award-winnning one in its own country probably shows that it was one where Germans in general could all relate to. As a non-German, I inevitably felt that some of the dialouge was lost on me, like the part where Kathrin would write speeches about garment sizes and having those hearing this in the movie laughing left me quite baffled. However, there are universal themes we can all relate to - idealism, family love, and adapting to uncontrollable changes. There were many memorable scenes, one of which was when Alex took his mother's old currency to to bank to exchange for Deutschmark only to find that they had past the deadline. Alex then flew into a rage, telling off everyone at the bank that "these were once YOUR money!". As one reviewer noted, it's painful to watch as it just reminds us that "in every major change in the world, there are always those that are left behind and those that suffer because of this evolution", which I believe is what Alex's endeavours throughout the movie is all about.

I'm no good with reviews but all I can say is that this 2003 German effort is one beautifully filmed and wonderfully written movie. There are many other good reviews out at IMDB.com so I'll leave you with that.

Official Website:
http://www.good-bye-lenin.de/intro.php (German)
http://www.sonyclassics.com/goodbye/flash.html (English)

Highly recommended!

On the sidelines...
Some interesting (and a little mind-boggling) trivia. According to IMDB, lead actor Daniel Bruhl was born with what is one of the longest names I've ever seen - Daniel Cesar Martin Brühl Gonzales Domingo, probably as a reflection of his Spanish-German parentage...

Moral of the story: it's always the kid who suffers...