Censorship and social transformation

Film review of Wolfgang Becker’s “Good Bye, Lenin!”

The film is set in East Berlin, 1989, during the final days before the collapse of the Berlin Wall. Riots against the regime are occurring in the city due to the social discontent escalating. The plot begins with a loyal communist mother named Christiane, who inadvertently watches her son Alex get beaten by the police on live television. Instantly after that Christiane lapses into a coma for several months. During the period of time that Christiane remains unconscious, the Berlin Wall falls and Germany is reunited. When Christiane breaks through her coma and regains consciousness, the doctors advise, as doctors always do in the movies, "the slightest shock could kill her." At that point Alex makes the decision to create a fictional world for his mother in which Eric Honecker is still in office, resource and consumer shortages are existent, and the television still projects propaganda of the soviet regime. He believes that deception in this case would be the most decent and humane thing to act upon. But like all deceits, the longer it continues the harder it becomes to maintain. The film engages into a sensitive interpretation of the social and cultural transformation of East Berlin after the collapse of the wall. In addition “Good Bye, Lenin!” successfully mixes comedy and tragedy, disappointment and joy, despair and hope, giving a well-rounded representation of the conditions in East Berlin.

The main discourse that the film revolves around, is the love of the son for his dying mother. Alex Kerner, transmits the themes of nostalgia and deception as an attempt to protect his fragile mother and to help dialog his own parallel world creation. In order to maintain the deception Alex is reduced to collecting old product from dumpsters in the city. Moreover in his daily profession, where he works in a satellite system shop, Alex and his friend Dennis produce phony news for his mother. Becker produces a very literal and real perspective of what censorship and propaganda actually are. Furthermore, it portrays how people under the Soviet regime had learnt to absorb everything that the state media and laws told them to, without questioning the information. Becker through Alex projects utopic imagery of the German Democratic Republic which mirrors the nature of censorship and propaganda in society. Significantly through the story Kerner, Becker succeeds in creating an inverted reality in which there is an apparent Western deliverance to the East.

An intrinsic part of the film is the departure of Alex’s father presented in the prologue of the film as a flashback. Ideologically Alex’s father and mother are exact opposites since, the mother is a loyal communist, whereas his father is against the soviet regime and is affiliated to the western mentality by abandoning his wife for another woman of similar ideals. Such a paradox is continuously expressed in the film from the prologue all the way until the end, when the deception is finally revealed to the mother, and Alex’s parallel reality ends. A notable part of this paradox is the visit of Alex to his father’s affluent house in West Berlin with his “new family” where the viewer has the opportunity to see the different living conditions of the West and East. A clever cinematic technique that Becker also uses is the unanswered question of why does Christiane follow the soviet mentality even though most people, if not all had grown to despise the regime, and were only following it due to obligation and fear. The audience remains questioning, why is she different from everyone else? Or what does she see in the regime that no one else does? Such questions reinforce the sense of nostalgia and cultural repression of the time.

An iconic moment from the film is the scene where Christiane ventures outside for the first time and experiences the reality of East Berlin. She witnesses advertisement of western corporations, old furniture of her neighbours been thrown out, and an old statue of Lenin being flown away by a helicopter. Becker, here performs an excellent image of the political and historical context of the time and the social transformation experienced. Such an overwhelming representation of the change in life standards and ideals, represents a perfect dichotomy of the “Fall of the Berlin Wall” and its impact.

A fascinating part of this film is the representation of censorship and self-censorship by Alex and Dennis. It is a humorous representation of the paranoid discourse of the Cold War elaborated by Nadine Gordimer. The scenes show how the characters authority of experience and interpretation of the regime define a censored reality. Gordimer defines this as a further polarization of the discourse due to the lack of a comparative global perspective. Alex also admits that he projected his own utopic version of the regime, which confirms the polarization of his vision and the actual reality. Such a conception relates to the work of Michael Holquist, where he states that “censors intend to construct rather than prohibit”. This insinuates that Alex in practice constructs an intermediary transition of the Westernisation of East Berlin to his mother. He constructed a one way interpretation of reality in which he does not actively prohibit his mother of anything.  The morality behind censorship is controversial, and opinions do vary from person to person since censorship is always present at different levels. In relation to the film censorship is depicted as humane act therefore the audience sympathizes with the attempt of Alex and the rest.

In Evaluating this film the role of the historical and political context offers the younger and older generation different feelings and understandings. The older generation has the opportunity to reminisce and relate in depth with the conditions, whereas the younger generation receives a portrayal of the recent past that defined the world, as a very distant and different time. One criticism worth mentioning is the fact that there is no direct representation of the atrocities of the German Democratic Republic. This is because it would have amplified the effect of the paradox connotations and polarization of ideals the film contains. Furthermore due to the fact that the movie is German and the context is more closely related to the German perspective, many viewers might not connect as easily with some film techniques or connotations of local ideological themes. So an adept knowledge of the history, gives multiple insights whilst watching the film, that otherwise might have not been clearly understood.

In Conclusion the film offers a splendid interpretation of Censorship and social transformation in Eastern Berlin. In addition it blatantly depicts the overarching theme of the paranoid discourse of the “Cold War”. Becker does an amazing job in bringing all the human emotions together in one film whilst keeping the political context relevant at all times.