I saw this movie many years ago and thought it rather great, but time distorts things. Goodbye Lenin! (2003) is an occasionally semi-funny insight into global changes impacting on the small scale; here, day-to-day life as experienced by an East German family going to increasingly elaborate lengths in maintaining the illusion of the GDR’s omniscience. The director’s stance as to reunification is a bit too ambiguous for me, the movie more concerned with a broad view of how the personal and political interweave, assessing the extent to which the society we live within affects us.
Why bother with such a contentious subject if you sit on the fence? This happens again and again.
It is at times a nauseating watch, almost an apologia for state tyranny. The film’s premise, pure Ostalgie, is that the economic and social constructs of the GDR, because of its restrictions on private wealth and public expression, harnessed a deep sense of togetherness felt by families. Wow. I won’t be watching it again. And all the Kubrick stylistic homages in it irritated me immensely.
If Lenin! refrains from showing the horror of life in East Germany in vivid detail by opting to examine why in recent years it has been de-emphasised, it has paved the way for a more meticulous and exacting probing of the Stasi state in contemporary cinema through devastating films such as The Lives of Others (2007), with all the GDR’s greed, hypocrisy, paranoia, and corruption laid bare.
It is 2020 and some folk (I call them “social spastics”) identify as communists.
They are the walking demonstration of why society is forever crumbling.
Anyway, I fucking despised this movie. HATED it. Stay away.
Further reading/viewing:
https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2003/jul/25/artsfeatures.dvdreviews
https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/goodbye-lenin-2004
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2007/apr/13/worldcinema.drama
Wanderings and ... wonderings. 