If there ever were an ideal place to fall into a coma, it would not be the Eastern Bloc, especially not in 1989. And typically, if you fall into a coma, everything you believe in hasn’t disappeared by the time you wake up. In Goodbye, Lenin!, this happens for devout socialist Christiane Kerner (Katrin Sa?), who has a heart attack and falls into a poorly-timed eight-month coma at the sight of her son Alex protesting.
The world does not sit idly while she vegetates; the Berlin Wall falls in November, and East and West Germany embark on an unswerving course towards reunification. In these eight months, banners and blimps herald the arrival of Coca-Cola and Levi Strauss behind the not-so-Iron curtain.
Christiane awakens a fragile husk of a person, and the doctor warns her son Alex (Daniel Br?hl) and daughter Ariane (Maria Simon) not to upset her in any way—learning of East Germany’s new reality would mean certain death. Sa?’s portrayal of an ailing but ardent socialist is believable and escapes feeling wooden.
Determined not to let her find out about the regime change, her devoted son recreates the lost East German socialism inside her bedroom. The dingy colors and almost-grainy shots of communist-era structures carefully reconstruct the mood of East Berlin. In their mother’s absence, the kids have spiced up the rest of the apartment, replacing the dingy Formica cabinets and portraits of party officials with a painfully Western tanning bed.
A devoted son wracked by guilt, Alex goes to endearing lengths to deceive his mother. Br?hl’s performance convincingly captures this enthusiasm sprung of desperation. Preoccupied with preserving a pocket of socialism around his mother, he grows increasingly alienated from his peers, who freely embrace consumption. He coaches the neighbors and pays her former pupils to sing her Young Pioneer songs.
Paying a visit to the shiny replacement of the socialist grocery in search of his mother’s beloved Spreewald pickles, Alex finds only pickles from Holland. “Overnight our drab corner store had become a gaudy consumer paradise,” Alex laments. He is surprised to discover that Western brands have replaced all the socialist staples. He conceals the new brands in old jars he fishes from dumpsters, but as East Germany marches onwards towards reunification, the old way of life is not about to reappear.
When Christiane demands to watch TV, Alex’s lies must become even more intricate. He enlists the help of his co-worker, an aspiring filmmaker. In a makeshift blue room with a fake news anchor, they begin to film nightly news broadcasts to explain the changes his mother observes from her window, such as a Coca-Cola banner draped across an adjacent building. These news broadcasts enable Alex to craft an ideal socialist state of which he can be proud. His broadcasts convince his mother that East Berliners are accepting refugees from the West, saving those who yearn to escape from the rat race. Becker’s adroit direction reveals the absurdities and ironies marking both economic systems.
While waiting by his mother’s bedside at the hospital, Alex falls for Lara (Chulpan Khamatova), a young Soviet nurse. With the help of his mussy-haired good looks, he successfully woos her. Lara’s character is flat, and aside from her displeasure with the continuation of Alex’s charade, their relationship remains a dry subplot. Their most interesting moment occurs when Lara encases Alex in plaster as practice for her cast-making exam.
Somewhere along the way, Alex grows up. As a child obsessed with space travel, his mother dubbed him her “little cosmonaut.” Now he encounters his childhood idol, a cosmonaut-turned-taxi driver, and asks him “What was it like, up there?” Though still a dreamer, Alex begins to accept the realities and failings of the socialist system, while never accepting wholesale the alternative offered in capitalism.
Through exploring this simple premise, Good Bye, Lenin! offers a thoughtful treatment of the ambiguities of everyday life at the end of the Cold War. While acknowledging the failings of socialism, Good Bye Lenin! is marked by a yearning-often hilarious-for what might have been.
Goodbye, Lenin! is showing at Loews Dupont Circle 5, 1350 19th St., N.W.
