Goodbye Lenin - Cage

Wolfgang Becker, in this movie, has non-obnoxiously linked together a bunch of characteristics of a 'fun' film with a lot of seriousness. In my opinion, this makes for the most enjoyable movies.

'Telling' history is always contentious and biased. You've got my 9th grade American History textbook vs. 'The People's History of the United States'. Then there is Genesis vs. 'The Origin of Species'. Not to mention, 3000 years or so of the white male/the victors vs. 50 years or so of a feminism/marginalized account. 'Goodbye Lenin' is an attempt at a re-telling of the fall of socialism and its impacts in East Berlin, specifically. The point is that history not only happens in ways we don't always want it to, but history also is not always told in the way we want it to be told. Becker, the lead actor Alex, Rick Bragg, and I agree that sharing a narrative of history is more fun and more meaningful when it is sensationalized in a way and simply made more personal. This is the first characteristic of movies I like that this movie encompasses.

Alex's mother, a staunch socialist, is in a coma for the fall of the Berlin wall. When she comes-to her world as she knew it no longer exists. The doctors tell Alex that if she experiences too much shock or stress that she will fall back into her coma or die. The ensuing action depends on Alex's adeptness at re-creating a world for his mother that no longer exists--a world that he fought and protested against and thought he hated. This is one of the most fun premises on which to make a movie. This is the second characteristic of movies I like that this movies makes use of.

When Alex's mother gets bored she demands that Alex set up a television for her to watch. Were she to watch a current news program she literally might die. Therefore, Alex and his aspiring film-director comrade take it upon themselves to tell Alex's mom, carefully how 1989 'really' happened. Son of Rambow, Broken Embraces, Be Kind Rewind, Sullivan's Travels, Cinema Paradisio, The Big Picture, Boogie Nights, Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, Adaptation, are all movies that I really like. These are all movies about making movies. I think it is a way for 'film-school' directors to substantiate either how serious or un-serious they take themsevles. I think it is also a really fun way to tell a story or to show how they, themselves like to tell a story. Watching Alex and his friend tell the story of how they wished the events of 1989 had occured is really fun. This is the third characteristic of movies I like that this movie does really well.

After a series of really good cover-ups, Alex finally falls asleep on the day his mom decides to get up and walk. As she makes her way through a foreign land that is her westernized kitchen, the homosexual neighbors moving in, and the Coca Cola advertisements outside her apartment, she makes it to the main road in time to see the statue of Lenin being airlifted out of East Berlin. As the sun sets, Lenin, although rigid like a statue, seems to nod towards Alex's mother in a final goodbye. As Lenin is drawn out into the sunset, Alex and his sister are there to catch their mother. Hollywood has done a lot of harm to cinema but they have done a lot of cool things as well. Sunset, cathartic slow-mo is almost always lame/sheshish/kitsch/poofter, but is simultaneously almost always enjoyable (depending on how cool the rest of the movie is or was). This is the fourth characteristic of movies I like that this movie does really well.

The final thing about this movie that is really likeable is that the seriousness of 1989, the seriousness of family-lies, the seriousness of losing a family member, the seriousness of mixing cultures, the seriousness of oppressive regimes, is not lost in the 'cool'/'fun' stuff that movie makers can do. In fact, I think it is enhanced in this movie. At some level it seems really necessary for us to contextualize all this 'serious' crap that surrounds us and to do this with humor or whatever works well in movies. Something about the characters being on a screen makes it easier to do. So when we tell a story in an unapologetically biased way, or enhance the importance of unique/seemingly-un-special parts of day-to-dat life, or see how someone goes about deciding how to do the things they do, or put a sunset in slow motion, we put the percieved seriousness of life in perspective. A movie that does this is almost always a movie that I like.