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12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Für Mutter, 5 Jan 2006
It's October 1989, and East Berliner Alex Kerner (Daniel Brühl), the teenage son of Communist Party stalwart Christiane (Katrin Saß), is arrested during a peaceful demonstration in the streets approaching The Wall. On her way to receive an honor for her service to the German Democratic Republic, Mom witnesses her boy's apprehension and has a heart attack that thrusts her into a coma, which lasts until June 1990. By then, The Wall has effectively been breached, Western capitalism has invaded East Berlin with a vengeance, Christiane's teenage daughter Ariane (Maria Simon) has dropped out of the university to get a job at the new Burger King, where she's taken up with a "Wessie" (a West Berliner), and Alex has fallen for Lara (Chulpan Khamatova), a student nurse from the USSR.After Alex insists that his mother be released for at-home convalescence, the doctor makes clear that any shock to the patient's system will likely kill her. Since Communism is all that Christiane has ever known, Alex contrives an elaborate scheme to shield his bed-ridden mother from all evidence of The Wall's collapse and the West's victory of materialism over her socialist world. What is she to think of that gigantic Coca-Cola advert hanging from the apartment building opposite her window? The improbable prospects for the con's success aside, GOOD BYE LENIN is a witty, clever, and sometimes poignant look at the wave of change which swept through East Berlin after the surprisingly sudden meltdown of Die Mauer, carrying forward the young and resilient with the flow, but leaving many bitter, old guard stranded in unfamiliar territory . Bruehl, resembling a young Christopher Reeve, is enormously engaging as the young man trying to do the right thing for his Mom, especially as it was his civil disobedience that catalyzed her physical debilitation in the first place. Christiane elicits much sympathy from the viewer. But she, too, has a secret that she's been keeping from her children for years. As a child of the Cold War era - born in 1949 - I gazed transfixed at the TV images in the closing weeks of 1989 as Die Mauer was danced upon and assaulted by raucous Berlin crowds from both the East and West. After all, I'd grown up with The Bomb, the Evil Empire, and Nikita's shoe-pounding at the U.N., and had myself navigated Checkpoint Charlie on a couple of occasions. GOOD BYE LENIN is a glimpse of The Wall's demise from the other side, and with a humorous twist. One only need visit the Berlin of today, pass through the once off-limits Brandenburg Gate, and walk down the Unter den Linden to witness the startling transformation enabled by that event.
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