Thursday, December 23, 2004
Goodbye Lenin! - Movie
David Bruhl in Goodbye Lenin!...
Okay, this is a good one. Goodbye Lenin! is a German film which, upon it's release there, was one of the biggest box-office attraction of the year in the country. It's one of those movies that makes you laugh, choke up a little and *gasp* think.
The story goes a little like this:
It opens with a short narrated introduction to the early years of the lead character Alex's (Daniel Bruhl) life, focusing on his fascination with space flight, his father leaving and his mother's subsequent problems. After the few hard years after his father leaves, Alex's mom becomes an avid East German Socialist and "replaces the love she had (for her husband) for her love and devotion to the Party".
Then the narrative ends and Alex is now a young man. A socialist demonstration that he is participating in quickly turns into a chaotic mess of civil unrest and he is arrested. As he is being beaten and dragged towards the truck in which he will be confined, he catches sight of his mother standing on the corner with tears in her eyes. He calls out to her as she suddenly collapses to the pavement and remains lying there until he can no longer see her. Alex is released from prison upon hearing that his mother has suffered from a heart attack.
She lies comatose in a hospital bed for 8 months. Alex visits her regularly, becoming quite fond of one of the nurses, Lara. The state of things in Germany is rapidly changing; with the Fall of the Wall, East and West are united and capitalism is slowly embraced (which is depicted by massive Coca-Cola logos littering trucks and buildings *gag* along with the introduction of large billboards and even blimps made for advertising), slowly westernizing Alex's mother's beloved socialist Western Germany as she lay silent with her son by her side.
She unexpectedly awakens, innocent and unaware, and Alex must protect her from knowing the state of things; a truth that, in her condition, will undoubtably kill her. Thus begins a rediculously implausable and entertaining sharade in which Alex seems to turn back the hands of time, recreating a world which yeilds to his mothers frail state of being and inextinguished political state of heart.
This includes reconstructing their home exactly as it was, desparately hunting for the old east German products no longer carried in the newly introduced grocery supermarket chains, an even getting a friend to help him put together fake news programs to show his mother that everything is going well in her proletarian paradise. Alex gets carried away as he tries to recreate a past for his mother, and it becomes slowly evident that he is doing all this for himself as well. He is attempting to maintain, through nostalgic indulgence, a past in which he enjoyed financial and emotional security of life in his socialist family. A past of which, in reality, is slowly being shredded apart with each new billboard and bought-out boutique.
The film is made and directed well, is visually pleasing and the characters are as charming as the story's sentiment. We won't see any American political-comedy box office films of this calibur for a very long time, if ever, and that in itself is a good reason to check it out.
PS~ this site takes long to load unless you have a fast connection, but it is VERY cool.
# posted by Alyssa @ 1:20 AM 
