Good Bye Lenin! (R)

You can make anything a comedy as long as it’s funny. It may seem like an odd rule of thumb, but it’s a good one to follow. Many comedies released are quick cash-ins. Rom-coms and Spoof movies can be made for very little and end up making a small fortune. This happens while original, genuine films get shoved into “indie-fame” and nothing more. It’s why I’ll often tell people to just give the indie wastelands a shot. You do have to tred through the hipster rubbish, but there are many gems to be enjoyed. “Good Bye Lenin!” was plucked from obscurity back in 2003 and since has gained an almost cult status. It was nominated for a BAFTA and a Golden Globe. It also has the dubious distinction of being a comedy about the fall of the Berlin Wall. One of the biggest shifts in European society since the fall of the Third Reich and someone thought it would be a good setting for a comedy. Granted, a dark comedy but a comedy nonetheless.

The story follows a family, the Kerners. They are residents of East Berlin, and so they are a socialist family. After the father leaves them for The West, Christiane Kerner (Katrin Sass), the mother of the family has a mental breakdown. After recovering from this she becomes a firm supporter of the socialist party in East Berlin. Her children, Alex Kerner (Daniel Brühl) and Ariane Kerner (Maria Simon), welcome her back with open arms. Ariane, just happy to see her mother, and Alex, dressed as a spaceship after he decides he wants to be a cosmonaut.

We then flash forward and Alex is in his early twenties and taking part in a demonstration against the socialist party. He then finds himself in prison, but not before his mother sees him and faints at the sight of her son against the party she holds so dearly. She is put into a coma for eight months; and in this time, the Berlin Wall comes down. This of course means the end of East and West Germany, making it just one united country. This means Alex can explore the consumer driven world and Ariane drops out, gets a job at Burger King and finds a husband from The West. Then Christiane awakens from her coma with doctors saying that any significant shock would cause another heart attack and it has a very high chance of being fatal. The comedy arises from Alex desperately trying to hide the fact that the country she loved no longer exists.

That plot sounds much more like a tense drama instead of comedy, but never the less, it completely blindsides a lot of people with how funny this movie actually is. While there is dramatic elements, the best parts of this movie are the increasingly ridiculous plots of Alex, including: Paying schoolboys to pretend they are former students of Christiane and making his Kubrick-obsessed friend make fake news reports. This comedy is covering a tragic story: the simple need for a son to do everything humanly possible to save his mother.

He is juggling a relationship, a job, and hiding the influx of Capitalism. You see Alex getting more and more desperate as the movie goes on and indeed you slowly begin to realise that his efforts become less and less funny. They become sad. Not in a way that suggests that Alex has no regard for his own life, but in a way that makes you feel sorry for Alex. He almost regresses back to child- like schemes and a child-like instinct to save his mother at all costs. The fact that the reason Christiane finds out about the existence of one Germany from following a small child I believe to be incredibly significant. This shows that it takes a child-like innocence to approach new things. She doesn’t have heart attack as everyone expected but she simply walks outside. It’s a truly beautiful moment that conveys a plethora of emotions, accompanied by Yann Tiersan’s perfect score

Yes, you may not have heard of “Good Bye Lenin!” before, but I beg you… please watch this. This is a rare film. An incredibly sad ending that makes me ludicrously happy about life.  Yes, it’s a sappy thing to say, but I will stand by it.

– by Paul O’Connor