Cinema World Tour, Film #2
Country: Germany
Watched in: Kasol, Himachal Pradesh, India
Rating: 9/10
I should have watched Goodbye Lenin! a long, long time ago. Not only that I know how good it's reputation is, so many of my friends, even from other countries, and even my Mum, recommended it to me many times. So I've finally watched it in order to start watching more international cinema, and I think it's one of the best german films produced after 2000. The screenplay is amazing, the film is funny, sharp-witted, brought to life by extraordinary performances. It's emotional, romantic, very touching, somehow very mature, satirical. But after all, despite being a comedy, Goodbye Lenin! is an intelligent political film.
All Non-Germans out there have to understand that the history of Germany after the second world war until the unification gets rarely taught in school. Very child know everything about WW2 and the dark time under Hitler, but especially the generations born after 1990 know very, very little about the long time in which Germany was seperated into two countries. Not only that, rarely anyone talks about it – much less than about Hitler-Germany. And if you hear people talk about it, then mostly in a bad way, as if in East Germany everything was horrible and as if West Germany was the paradise.
Well, anyone who reads a bit further and talks to a few elderly citizen (to anyone on the whole world: you should do that more often!) will notice soon that in the DDR (GDR), not everything was bad. Sure, the economy couldn't work, spies were everywhere and the level of individual freedom was rather low. But still, many old people say that the change from communism to capitalism ruined many things – the community, the security of income, etc.
Nowadays, everyone says that back in the day, nobody wanted to live in the East, everyone was happy when the system changed to capitalism. But that's not true: Back in the times of Cold War, the opinions divided the people into two: Not all people in the West liked the capitalist system, and neither did all people in the East hate Communism. This wasn't only like this in Germany, but in the whole world.
That's what makes Goodbye Lenin! such a great film: it doesn't say one time that the DDR (GDR) was bad. Of course, the system was very flawed and authoritarian, but the main character Alex doesn't wish to destroy it. He despites many parts of it, everything connected to propaganda for example. But while caring for his mother and constructing a fake DDR for her, he somehow realizes that he somehow misses the old system. At one point of the film is said that his version of the DDR, which he presents to his mother, is somehow the version he would have wished for – not a capitalist Germany, but a reformed, better, socialist Germany. That shows also in reality: The transition from Communism to united Germany happened so quickly, many Germans couldn't adapt properly. Did really everybody wish for 100% capitalism when talking about reunification?
But nowadays, nobody talks about that anymore. In history books, it looks like the capitalist system won, and that there never was any alternative. Many people forget that capitalism isn't the only system which is possible.
A film like Goodbye Lenin! reminds of that. Of course, the east european communist system were flawed. Yugoslavia was somehow okay, the DDR (GDR) to some extent too; Romania, USSR, Albania etc. shoudln't even be called communist systems, but simply tyrannic dictatorships – which had nothing to do with communism.
But just because they were flawed doesn't mean that communism was a bad idea, or that everybody wished that it would be replaced by capitalism. When we look at the world nowadays, we can perfectly see that it doesn't work any better.
What I'm trying to say: I, myself, am not a communist. But I appreciate a lot that this wonderful film Goodbye Lenin! showed the real, two-sided history: that the transition from communism to capitalism maybe wasn't as great as everybody says nowadays, and that this wasn't the only option of history. And that still, there are alternatives. Capitalism doesn't have to be forever.
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