Good Bye Lenin! [DVD] [2003]

A fantastic film!If you don't mind subtitles or if you understand German then great! This film is one of my favourites!Great price and great dvd for my collection!

I came across the super comedy a number of years ago when I was staying in Germany. I have a number of friends from Rostock Eastern Germany and as a lecturer in International Relations in the USA, have talked endlessly about life in the former Warsaw Pact countries with Czech, Polish and German friends. This film looks at the collapse of the GDR from one family's perspective in a way that mirrors what I was told happened by my friends.The plot is simple but intriguing. It begins in the closing days of the GDR. The narrative is given by Alexander (Daniel Bruhl), who is an unhappy young man living in a claustrophobic system, which he feels is oppressing him. He lives with his mother, a devout communist since her husband fled to the West and sister in a small communist flat in East Berlin. Alexander is involved in a demonstration and gets arrested in front of his mother. The shock of his arrest brings on a heart attack which leaves her in a comma for a number of months. Whilst the mother is in the comma the GDR collapses, the wall comes down, western goods and eventually money flood into the East, the sister finds a West German boyfriend, the family flat gets a western make over and many peoples lives change. When the mother awakens, the doctors are afraid a shock may kill her, so being a devout communist and fearing finding out there is no GDR any more, Alexander decides to keep what has happened secret from his mother, with hysterical consequences.Whilst the film is humorous it is also quite a sad and reflective film. It shows that not everything changed for the best and all things western had their personal and societal costs. The tension between East and West Germans, which I felt when I lived in Wurzburg in 1990 and Luneburg in 1992, comes across brilliantly. The characterisations used in the film are all sublime. The cost to East German society is left wide open so all can see in terms of, unemployment, alcoholism and the consequences for the family of an escapee to the West. I actually use this film in my USA International Relations classes, to show students that not everything was bad behind the Iron Curtain and that there was a severe societal cost to the wall coming down and the westernisation process.I think this film is sublime representation on life in an Eastern Bloc country and how the country changed due to westernisation. It is a comedy but it also shows the negative side to all the changes that happened in 1989 and 1990. I think this is the best German comedy I have seen in many years. My version had great English subtitles.Highly recommended.

I've been wanting to catch this film since its release, but couldn't find a cinema or an online source until Amazon - it was really fascinating to watch this film set back in time, head further back in time to the East & West Germany era, and its method was both comedic and heartbreaking. Excellent writing and acting, and I'm pleased to finally have seen it.

I saw this film when it was initially released back in 2003 and have only now (2011), following my first visit to Berlin, got around to purchasing the DVD. Unfortunately, this means that the only version I can find to buy is the one without all the extras that accompanied the initial release.Many have commented on the comedic elements of this film. For sure there are some good funny moments, but I felt the film only came into its own halfway through, once the premise of the mother being nursed after waking from her coma had been set. But the more I watched the movie, the more I came to the conclusion that it's not really a comedy at all; rather, it's a family drama played out in historic times. I came also to understand more how so many Germans loved it for it showed how the unification underlined that not all the West was good and not all the East was bad.There are some problems with the plot. For example, would the unwanted and unfashionable furniture placed on the street really still be there eight months later? But, as with the novels of Dickens or Trollope, such inconvenient necessities are subject to the greater importance of the developing drama.Finally, why is this DVD only fit for those aged fifteen and over to watch?

Yes it’s an interesting insight into domestic day to day life behind the Berlin Wall, no doubt strangely nostalgic to those who lived through it. For those of us in the West without those references, this is much more a story of a son’s love for his Mother and the lengths he will go to to protect her from a reality she’s not yet equipped to face. Not dark, or chilling but light and heartwarming.

It's 1989.Son Alex is taking part in a demonstration against the Berlin Wall when he gets arrested.Mother and staunch Communist Christiane is on her way to receive an award for her services to the German Democratic Republic when she witnesses his arrest. She has a heart attack and falls into a coma lasting several weeks.In the intervening period the Berlin Wall is torn down.When she finally emerges from her coma, the hospital authorities advise her children that the slightest shock might kill her. Knowing her political beliefs, the children decide that they cannot possibly divulge the fact that the Berlin Wall has come down... And so begins the elaborate pantomime of pretending that nothing has changed.This is the comic premise behind the film and it works well... up to a point... with added anti-communist aberrations popping up to test the ingenuity of the two doting children. However, in comedy terms the film begins to flag towards the end.

The first time I watched this film several years ago, I enjoyed the comedic elements. This time, however, the strongest impression I had was of how much a son will do for the happiness of his mother because he loves her. This message is reinforced by the final shot of the film, a flashback of the son (as a young boy) looking up at his mother with love and admiration. That is something beautiful that one doesn't see often in films.