GoodBye Lenin!

The German production ‘Goodbye Lenin’ directed by Wolfgang Becker and released in 2003 is set a few months before the fall of the Berlin Wall, and follows the hectic development of German Society during the first months in the aftermath of such event. Nominated and granted the most prominent awards across the European film scene, ‘Goodbye Lenin’ also received strong positive reviews across the Atlantic. The American-based review website “Rotten Tomatoes” rated “Goodbye Lenin” with a 90% out 100%, followed by the nomination to the Best Foreign Film in the Golden Globes. Such positive reception foretells an extraordinary portrayal of the creation of a collective memory to make up for the loss of stability in a transitory period.

Relying on a limited number of indoor and outdoor settings, the film narrows down the experience of two generations of East Germans to one only family composed of a strongly ideological mother and two children. The mother, Christiane falls into comma days before the GRD collapses and the communist way of living casts into oblivion. Whilst Christine, the mother, remains in an isolated hospital room, the society outside the walls undergoes dramatic and drastic changes, Christiane due to her strong faith in Communism, could not have been able to conceive. Yet, not only does the outside world move towards a radically different dimension, but the family Christiane brought up under strong communist principles, does also shift towards a new direction. Yet a real improvement in the family standards of living when Capitalism arrives is hardly recognizable. In the aftermath of the fall Christiane’s daughter, abandons university and starts to work in a chain that represents the epitome of Americanization: McDonald’s, and Alex, the second child of the family continues to work in an electricity company that now, lives up to fate the selection of East Germany employees. The intimate portrait of the daily life of this family might be seen to underlie subtle criticism towards the reduction of the individual under these two antagonistic regimens. Starting with a violently repressed protest by the GDR state forces, that drive Christiane to an eight-month-coma, the movie depicts the frustrated American dream the average citizen experiences under the umbrella of Capitalism.

Beyond the political references, the film is centered on the concept of self-censorship as a method to construct a collective memory to anchor ourselves in a world characterized by an increasing instability of time and the fracturing of lived space. When the mother wakes up from comma, Alex fears she would discover the truth of what happened to the system she committed to, the GDR. To mask reality, Alex builds a fantasy set in his mother’s bedroom where any element of an unwelcoming outside reality is being censored. Alex embarks in what the scholar A. Huyssen describes as an obsessive process of “musealization” (27).  By taking hold of cans, tins, clothes, furniture… from the GDR, Alex aims at stopping the passing of time. The objects Alex obsessively collects to can be understood as what the scholar Huyssen quoting Lubbe describes as lieux de mémoire, that is, elements that offer “traditional forms of cultural identity to a destabilized modern subject” (33). Such banal objects become reminiscences of a passed epoch that compensate for the loss of shared and communal identity. The anxiety behind Alex’s daily dumping diving trip in seek of the rests of the former GRD does not only represent his desire to protect his mother, but it gradually becomes an identity reconstruction for himself. Alex embodies a whole generation of Germans who are required to forget and forced to embrace a new identity that was and artificially constructed by external conditions, and enforced upon them. The reality Alex creates for his mother becomes a fantasy that both Alex and Christiane use to secure their fragmented identities. Yet, I must pinpoint such a bitter reality, is depicted with serenity and compassion. The camera follows the daily steps of a son who carefully takes care of his mother.

In order to protect his mother from an outside incomprehensible reality, Alex becomes immersed in a process of prohibition that turns into an active process of construction. By censoring Christine’s reality, Alex creates a myth, that merges the reality that used to be, that of the GDR he grew up in, together with his dreams and expectations of a reality that never was, projecting these images into a supra-reality where the real and the fiction come together. The particularity of such proactive censorship seems to be clearly depicted in a scene that follows the mother’s first contact with the outside. Alex falls asleep when he is on a visit to his mother’s bedroom. The mother goes outside and encounters cars from the FRG and IKEA billboards. Alex covers-up the truth by broadcasting a self-made piece of news where such contact between East and West is argued to be a GDR initiative to welcome those who flee capitalism. Such lie proves to be Alex’s deep desire as

While looking out of the living room window, and staring at the cars, Alex sighs and claims,  “I wish this was what really happened”.

Such climax scene does also raise a new question ‘Goodbye Lenin’ skillfully succeeds in portraying, that of the fear of the unknown. The fantasy Alex has created for her, enable Christina to continue to live outside the truth she censored her children from. Several months passed after Christiane wakes up from comma before she is able to confess to her children, their father never died, and was waiting for them in the West. The fear of an unwelcoming and alien environment stopped Christiane from meeting up with his husband, “marrying” the communist state in substitution for the loss. By censoring the truth to her children, Christiane build a new family framework that enables her to overcome the fear that stopped her from going towards the unknown. Here again, the censor is not only restricting the truth, but actively involved in a process of discourse creation that enables the censor’s self-identification in first place.

In short, ‘Goodbye Lenin’ excels at portraying the obstacles of regimen transition from the standpoint of the ordinary citizen.

Works cited

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

Huyssen, Andreas. "Present Pasts: Media, Politics, Amnesia." Project Muse 12.1 (2000): 28-36. Web.