Hey folks, Harry here... Been hearing about GOODBYE, LENIN for a long time now and everytime I read about it, I instantly want to be watching it. This sounds FANTASTIC! I love Cold War Comedies and this one sounds very gratifying! Here ya go...
Hey Harry,
Your man X here, doing the usual Seeing-Through-Time and losing his mind deal.
The Cambridge Film Festival has just ended here in the U.K., and it was a blast. Cate Blanchett and Joel Schumacher both showed up (win some, lose some) to talk about VERONICA GUERIN. The people's first choice for the festival went to SPIRITED AWAY, not surprisingly.
But I thought I should tell you about another great film, GOOD BYE, LENIN! It has, I believe, become the largest German box-office success ever, globally speaking. While that might be an exaggeration, this film deserves a lot of praise.
Without spoiling: it's 1989, and the Berlin Wall is about to come down. Alex (Daniel Bruhl, a young Joaquin Phoenix look-alike) lives in East Germany with his mother and his sister. When Alex was a kid, his father ran off to the West to have his brains fucked out by his new Western-values girlfriend. When her husband left, Alex's mother Christiane (the Helen-Mirren-like Katrin Sass) married the Great Socialist State.
But before the Wall becomes "the largest recycling project in German history," Alex's mother falls into a coma. Eight months later, she wakes up, and the doctors warn Alex that if his mother suffers any kind of shock or stress, she'll likely die.
What ensues is a hilarious and frequently touching con job, in which Alex re-creates East Germany in the confines of his apartment. Out with the new, and in with the old. He has to come up with Christiane's beloved awful East German food, resort to charity shops for badly made East German clothing, and even fake East German TV.
Soon the con starts to get out of hand, as Alex becomes so caught up in what East Germany might have been, that he doesn't stop with just re-creating it as it was. Wouldn't it be great if the Communists actually won the Cold War, instead of the West?
It's a great film with great performances. Despite the improbability of Alex's con, it doesn't compare to the suspension of disbelief you need to get through "Ocean's 11" or "Charlie's Angels: Full Ass." Alex's best friend, the TV technician who helps him with a lot of the scam, is a wannabe Stanley Kubrick, and the sequences he's in often include homages to Kubrick' s own techniques. (I spotted a couple besides the obvious one, but there are probably more.)
As for Chulpan Khamatova (a mouthful, and you'll be wishing she was *your* mouthful), she's Khamatova Supernova as far as I'm concerned. She plays the gentle, doe-eyed hottie who plays nurse to Alex's mother, and gives Alex his own share of nurse fantasies. For God's sake, someone cast this woman in a lead role, preferably one with more nurse outfits.
Yes, for a film about East Germany, this is not only funny and gripping, but also pretty sexy stuff. I won't spoil Alex's first visit to the West when the Wall comes down, but you can imagine what it involves, for a typical eighteen-year-old male on a motorbike. Let's just say seedy décor, dim lighting, and a lot of whipping cream.
Despite the edge to it, the film has a good message, too, especially in this day and age with a large number of Americans considering pulling up stake and heading to Canada. (I'd cheer them on, but I'm more tempted to say stay and fight the fight to keep America sane.) It's a film about what real socialism is, compared to what East Germany tried to make it, and it offers a pretty hopeful (and convincing) vision for a humanist socialist future in Western society. Whether or not your city has ever been turned into a war zone by a G8 summit, you'll probably sympathize.
So for those of you looking for a German answer to AMELIE, but with a lot more substance to go with the laughs, check out GOOD BYE, LENIN! I don't know if there are any plans for a U.S. release. But it's a kick to see how the West was Lost.
Until Gimli scores with Galadriel,
X
