For posterity sake I have to mention this is my fifth German film: "Das Boot," "Downfall," "Run Lola Run!," "The Wave," and now this one. It's going well.
Imagine waking up and the world was drastically different. I don't mean in an absurd way like "Idiocracy," but I suppose that isn't too much different from what occurred in "Good Bye Lenin!" When Mrs. Werner (Katrin Sass) fell into a coma Germany was divided deeper than hip-hop in the 90's. There was no wall separating Biggie and Tupac while there was one dividing Germany. After eight months of being comatose she awoke and Germany was totally different. Mrs. Werner would not come to know that because her son, through an elaborate charade, kept that hidden. Her doctor told him that if she got even the least bit excited, she could suffer another heart attack, and for a die hard socialist party member like herself, finding out that the German Democratic Republic had collapsed would be more than a little exciting. Hence, with keeping his mother's health in mind, Alex (Daniel Bruhl) set out to fool his mother as long as he possibly could.
It is an interesting and even educational movie. Though I was a kid I remember the fall of the Berlin wall, but I only remember it as snapshot images on the news from here in America between watching sitcoms and cartoons. "Good Bye Lenin!" gives the viewer an inside look of what the unification of Germany was like. What looked like a seamless transition to the rest of the world was a dramatic shift for true believers and this film tried to capture that through the eyes of a young man helping his infirmed East German mother.
Imagine waking up and the world was drastically different. I don't mean in an absurd way like "Idiocracy," but I suppose that isn't too much different from what occurred in "Good Bye Lenin!" When Mrs. Werner (Katrin Sass) fell into a coma Germany was divided deeper than hip-hop in the 90's. There was no wall separating Biggie and Tupac while there was one dividing Germany. After eight months of being comatose she awoke and Germany was totally different. Mrs. Werner would not come to know that because her son, through an elaborate charade, kept that hidden. Her doctor told him that if she got even the least bit excited, she could suffer another heart attack, and for a die hard socialist party member like herself, finding out that the German Democratic Republic had collapsed would be more than a little exciting. Hence, with keeping his mother's health in mind, Alex (Daniel Bruhl) set out to fool his mother as long as he possibly could.
It is an interesting and even educational movie. Though I was a kid I remember the fall of the Berlin wall, but I only remember it as snapshot images on the news from here in America between watching sitcoms and cartoons. "Good Bye Lenin!" gives the viewer an inside look of what the unification of Germany was like. What looked like a seamless transition to the rest of the world was a dramatic shift for true believers and this film tried to capture that through the eyes of a young man helping his infirmed East German mother.