Film review: Good Bye, Lenin!

Jade Copier

S1384503

Elective: Censorship and Social Transformation

Dr. Ksenia Robbe

Word count: 970

Big white lies

            The 2003 movie Good Bye, Lenin! by Wolfgang Becker can be seen as the portrayal of two big white lies that have serious impacts on the history and future of the main characters in the movie. The first white lie starts in the late 1970s when the father of the main character, Alex, flees from the German Democratic Republic to the Federal Republic of Germany. Alex’ mother (Christiane) decides not to tell her children the truth and tells her children that their father has left for West Germany with his new ‘capitalist’ girlfriend. The second white lie starts when Alex’ mother, who is a devoted Party member, has a heart attack after seeing Alex joining a protest march for free press and against the party. The heart attack caused for her to remain in a coma for eight months. Due to her comatose state, she missed significant changes in East Germany, such as the Fall of the Berlin Wall. When she wakes up, she is still very vulnerable and her children realise that telling her the news of the Fall and the unification of Germany, might be too much for her. Therefore, her children decide not to tell her about the events that happened during her eight month coma. However, it becomes increasingly harder to continue the lies.  

Self-censorship plays a crucial role in the lives of the Kerner family. Normally, we talk about censorship as something negative, but the movie shows that censorship can have a positive impact. The lie that Christiane tells her children about the departure of her husband, is a way for her to cope with his leave. She is afraid to leave the country with her children and to protect them, she comes up with her lie. Whether fleeing East Germany with two children would have been successful or not, remains the question, but thanks to her lie, they did not leave East Germany and lived (relatively) peaceful lives.
The second lie can be described as the creation of an imaginary world with its own regime and media. This lie is a way for Alex and his sister to protect their mother. Even when it becomes increasingly harder to maintain this lie, he continues to do so, in order to assure his mother’s health. His sister and girlfriend are becoming critical of this lie, because the lying is getting out of control. They want Alex to tell her the truth, but he refuses, fearing that she cannot handle such news.
So self-censorship in this movie is not per definition something negative, it is a way of protecting your family.

This film does not only have features of self-censorship, but also features of the censorship of remembering. For the main characters, it becomes increasingly harder to maintain their lies. This film does an excellent job in showing us the impact of the reunification of not just the East and West. But the unification of democracy and capitalism with communism and socialism. In history books, you will often only read about the Fall of the Berlin Wall and the unification of the GDR and the FRG, without mentioning the impact it had on peoples’ daily lives. However, Good Bye, Lenin! shows us the significant impact that the reunification has had on people’s lives, by showing us the difficulty of maintaining the pre-1989 situation. What makes it even harder to recreate the situation before the Fall of the wall, is that the pre-1989 situation was very much loaded with censorship. Therefore, Alex is not only reproducing the situation from before the reunification, but he is also reproducing the censorship of that time. No matter what happens, Alex finds a way to make that happening fit into the politics (and censorship) of the time before the reunification. So, when Christiane saw a Coca Cola advertorial, he told her that Coca Cola was actually invented in Germany and was not a capitalist, but a socialist drink. Another moment where Alex is reproducing censorship of the pre-1989 period, is when Christiane finds out about Westerners living in the GDR. He quickly comes up with the lie that some Westerners were unsatisfied with the capitalist lifestyle, and therefore sought refuge in the East.
So, Alex works so hard on maintaining the image and situation of the old regime, that in the end, he makes up an imaginary regime that is living up to his mother’s standards of what the state should be like.

In the end, however, it becomes clear, that even white lies eventually come out. Christiane tells her children the real story about her husband, whom she wants to see before she dies. Lara (Alex’ girlfriend), who is fed up with the lies, tells Christiane the truth on her deathbed.

After analysing the movie, I have come to the conclusion, that even though censorship and lies are sometimes told for a good cause, in the end, the truth will prevail. When Christiane realises that she is dying, she knows that she has to come clean and tell the truth. In the end, she values the truth higher than maintaining her lie.
Lara, who cannot continue to live in the situation where they have to maintain a façade in order to protect Christiane, decides to tell Christiane the truth. Her motives are not entirely clear, but one could argue that she needs to tell Christiane the truth in order to save her relationship with Alex, who is completely consumed by his imaginary regime. Therefore, Lara values the truth higher than a lie. So, to conclude, it becomes clear that people choose to lie or censor certain events, as long as that is the most efficient way of dealing with issues, however, when it becomes more valuable to speak the truth, most people will choose to tell the truth.

Works cited

Good Bye Lenin! Dr. Wolfgang Becker. Perf. Daniel Brühl, Katrin Saß, Maria Simon, and Chulpan Khamatova. X Verleih AG, 2003. Film.