Wolfgang Becker - 2003 - Germany - M (violence & language)

Comedy/Drama, 2h 1m

Considering what a monumental event it's been in the history of our planet, the fall of communism in Europe almost a decade and a half ago has inspired amazingly few memorable films on the subject -- in fact, no particular titles leap to mind. This is one of the reasons why Good Bye, Lenin! is something special. In a disarmingly entertaining fashion, this multi-award-winning German bittersweet comedy seems to encapsulate all the emotion and drama of that profound geopolitical event.

“It's the story of Alex (Daniel Bruhl), an East Berlin teenager, circa 1989, and Christiane (Katrin Sass), his proudly patriotic mother—a woman whose natural devotion to socialism has been fortified by her husband's cowardly defection to the West. One day, just as the turmoil that will lead to the fall of the Berlin Wall gets underway, Christiane has a heart attack, lapses into a coma and wakes up eight months later—just as communism has collapsed and the long-divided country is about to be reunited.

But her condition is so—the doctors say the slightest shock might kill her—that Alex can't tell her what has happened to her world, and he spends the rest of the movie going to outrageous lengths to make her believe East Germany is not only still intact, but thriving. This involves, among other things, masking the giant Coca-Cola sign that pops up outside their apartment window, passing off all the new traffic and gaudy automobiles as "refugees from the West" and videotaping faked newscasts that attest to the triumph of socialism…

In a small miracle of agility, director Wolfgang Becker walks the tightrope between pathos and farce with a completely straight face, and he captures the 20th century's most climactic moment in such an offbeat but satisfying way that his little film could well become a classic.”
– William Arnold, Seattle Post-Intelligencer