Goodbye Lenin Analysis

Goodbye, Lenin is a heart-warming film about a son’s attempt to make time stand still in order to keep his sick mother from knowing the truth about the political changes. His mother, Christiana, is a strong political activist in the Socialist party in East Germany. She becomes ill after she sees her son, Alex, protesting in the streets, she falls into a coma after suffering a heart attack. During the eight months she is in a coma, the Berlin Wall comes down and capitalism floods in from the west. When she does finally awaken, the doctors urge Alex and his sister Ariane to leave their mother in the hospital since the huge changes to society could force her into another heart attack, which she would not survive. Alex does not like the idea of
As a film audience, we witness the changes to society through different generations as well. In the beginning when the wall came down, people were generally happy with the idea of the new freedoms promised. However, as the film progressed, we get a glimpse into what the citizens of the GDR lost through the beginning of reunification. There was mass job loss and forced retirement to the older generation. This is emphasized in the film with the neighbor and family friend literally digging through trash in order to survive. The people of East Germany were technically now free, but their lives were not necessarily better off. The film also shows the impact of the start of capitalism in the East. Supermarkets were cleared of GDR products to make way for western commodities. There is even a scene in the film were soldiers are preforming the changing of the guards in front of a building while huge Coca-Cola trucks pass by that would usually have been military trucks. Ariane fully embraces the new western culture seeping in by dating a western man, working at Burger King, and redecorating herself and the apartment. Despite adapting to the new culture around them, both Alex and Ariane have a sense of nostalgia for the past East. Their childhood is associated with the East and it wasn’t all terrible. People did make a life for