Goodbye Lenin Essay

“It always takes about 10 years to have some distance. And distance allows you to laugh about yourself and things you wouldn’t dare laugh about when you’re right in the middle of it,” director of Goodbye, Lenin!, Wolfgang Becker, stated in an interview discussing the movie. Goodbye, Lenin! focuses on the drastic shift in the lives of East Germans following the fall of the Berlin Wall. With the rise of communist nation, Russia, after World War II, came the conflict between communist and capitalist nations. Russia sought to spread socialism by branching out and bringing countries such as Bulgaria and Czechoslovakia under its political dominion. These nations are commonly referred to as the satellite nations of the Cold War. These countries
Other accounts from the time period show a different perspective on the events following the reunification. Adam Michnik recalls life under the German Democratic Republic as one with a “typically incompetent government run by a party nomenclature, corruption, ubiquitous police surveillance, and a deepening economic crisis.” With numerous sources denying Becker’s claims, it can be assumed that there was some circumstance making Becker’s experience different from the rest. One factor that would have affected Becker’s perspective on the fall of communism in the east would be Becker’s family’s financial stability. Due to the drastic difference between Becker’s perception of the fall of the Berlin Wall and others, Becker’s movie may not be as valid of a tool in understanding eastern Germany or the mindset of the Germans re-entering life under a capitalist nation. Thus, Goodbye Lenin! offers interesting points of focus on the lives of eastern Germans returning to capitalism. However, the director’s thoughts on the period following German reunification are very different from other accounts from other Germans who experienced the decline of communism and the collapse of the Berlin Wall. As a result, this movie may not be an accurate depiction of the events that