Film Reviews

Good Bye Lenin!

• Rating:
• Director: Wolfgang Becker.
• Starring: Daniel Bruhl, Katrin Sass, Maria Simon, Chulpan Khamatova, Florian Lukas, Alexander Beyer, Burghart Klaussner.
• Details: Ger / 121 minutes / (No Cert).

What's this? Germans with a sense of humour? Pull the other one. Well, according to Good Bye Lenin those in the former East Germany are at least on speaking terms with a sense of mischief. This slight but well executed comedy drama is predominantly set immediately before and after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. At the centre of the story is a small family, Alex (Daniel Bruhl), his sister Ariana (Maria Simon) and her baby daughter, marshalled by their communist party-worshiping mother, Christiana (Katrin Sass). As he gets older, Alex begins to question the motives of the party, which inadvertently leads to his mother having a massive heart attack and slipping into a coma. When she eventually emerges several months later, the Wall has fallen. However, doctors believe that her heart can't stand up to any further shocks and Alex, his sister and his new girlfriend pretends that everything is just how it was before she got sick. But when you've suddenly got capitalism cropping up on your doorstep, that's no easy task. A gentle rolling comedy which doesn't appear to have that much foundation in reality, Good Bye Lenin probably works better as an examination in the changes in attitude between the former East and West Germanys. Both nostalgic and scabrous, Good Bye Lenin derives its strength from the sympathetic, well rounded and written characters, if the situation which they find themselves is a little too unbelievable - even for that remarkable time. Don't take it too seriously, and Good Bye Lenin has to power to seduce.

Review by Garreth Murphy