'Good Bye, Lenin!' is a gem of a film
Good Bye, Lenin!
Wolfgang Becker
Daniel Bruhl, Florian Lukas, Maria Simon, Katrin Sass
15.
The wall comes tumbling down; and gives us a wonderfully witty and thoughtful - and award-winning - German film set against the reunification of Germany.
We meet the Kerner family - mother Christiane and son and daughter - in East Germany. Mother, a dedicated Commie, has a heart attack just as things are about to change with the fall of the Berlin Wall. When she emerges from a coma several months later, her family - father has long gone West - are advised to keep the awful truth from her.
There is much humour in the efforts to convince her that nothing has changed outside her bedroom window, and director Becker also manages to infuse the film with more serious considerations of what it was like before, and after, the end of the Wall.
And everybody involved in the playing is wonderfully spot-on. A gem of a film, leaving us with a lot to consider about change.
4/5.
