Film Review: Goodbye Lenin (2003)

1989, East Germany – it’s an extremely volatile time in Europe and in the final days before the collapse of the Berlin Wall, there are riots against the government. Idealistic communist Christiane (Katrin Sass) suffers a heart attack when she sees her son Alex (Daniel Bruhl) amongst the protesters. When she wakes from her coma eight months later, the Wall is down and communism no longer exists in Germany, her world has been completely dismantled. Her daughter Ariane (Maria Simon) has given up her degree to work at Burger King and Alex has fallen in love with Lara (Chulpan Khamatova), the nurse caring for her.

Doctors warn Alex that any kind of big news could cause his mother to have a fatal heart attack, so he decides to continue the fallen regime within her apartment. His scheme is extravagant to say the least, however Alex doesn’t want to take any risks with his mother’s health, sacrificing everything for her faith in the now crumbled socialist society. While Christiane is extremely loyal to the party, she had spent a lot of her spare time writing letters to the government about issues from dodgy products to controversial sizing for women’s underwear. Her reality is completely manipulated but, as you can imagine, the cracks start to slowly show when Alex simply cannot keep up with how drastically their world is changing.

Goodbye Lenin shows us how the East Germans were not given any time to transition into their new way of living. As time and Alex’s facade continues things become more difficult, like when he finds it increasingly hard to obtain Christiane’s favourite foods as they’ve quickly been replaced with a Westernised version.

Bruhl is as gorgeous as always (it seems as though he’s Germany’s answer to Jake Gyllenhaal), giving an incredibly heartfelt performance. The lengths he goes to in order to keep the truth from Christiane are, for the most part, hilarious and you’ll spend a lot of this film laughing.

Director Wolfgang Becker isn’t trying to push any agenda here, showing the pros and cons of both communism and capitalism. Goodbye Lenin harbours some serious undertones but is incredibly fun and optimistic. A must-see for all.

★★★★☆