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Good Bye Lenin! (2003)
Director: Wolfgang Becker
Country: United States
Length: 121 minutes
Type: Comedy, Drama
As this begins just before the Berlin Wall comes down, I was expecting the story to be about that. Instead 'Good Bye Lenin!' takes the more interesting approach of dealing with the fall in a quick montage, then exploring the year that followed, in a warmly satirical way. When Daniel Brühl's Alex's committed communist mum wakes up from a coma having missed it all, he maintains the pretence for her that nothing has changed, in case the shock causes her to have a relapse. That whimsical idea would be enough fun to sustain the film, but there are also clever ways in which Alex seeks to make an idealised version of the false reality. It's like they use it as a grieving process for the communism society they've lived with all their lives, things have gotten better overall now but they still feel nostalgia for the aspects that were okay and familiar about it. 'Good Bye Lenin!' is funny, emotional and culturally fascinating too. The recreation of East Germany in 1990 is impressive and epic in scale. Some of it is just great attention to sets and costumes but there are what must be lots of early CGI (which still holds up 100%) used to create a full Soviet-era city.
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