Category Archives: The style

The Thin Line between Truth and Lies: The Power of the Kerner Family Relationships

Has Alex continues to live the life he produces become increasingly outrageous. The length which she goes to 2 create these lies for his mother are likewise outrageous. When her favorite pickles could not be found he dives into the dumpsters in their neighbourhood in search of an empty glass jar from her favorite pickle brand and filled it with the new pickles from Holland. But perhaps most interesting is that he uses legitimate footage of the Berlin Wall falling and the people rushing into the west but he uses this image to twist the truth with a new commentary. The commentary states that this footage is actually depicting people rushing away from the list in order to get rid of their materialistic lives and embraced the ideals of the East. While this is entertaining in the film itself, it is easy to see how even in modern times, today, we are told or shown what things to believe in the media and they are not necessarily the whole truth.

Most interesting leave though is that the deeper Alex in bed himself in this fictional world the more convinced his girlfriend and his sister become that he is doing the wrong thing. Alex of course is not the only member of his family who has started to blend the truth. In fact the mother revealed at the end of the film that for many years she was the one who abandoned the children’s father by refusing to go with him in the West. The children had been told that their father left either in search of another woman or simply turning his back on his children but in truth the mother refused to go with him and made her children stay in the East.

Family relationships are a key element in this particular where the family is made up of vastly different characters. And as the narrative move forward the relationships between all of these characters become increasingly strained the results of Alex attempting to protect his mother with his charade. He becomes increasingly controlling and the deception he started in order to protect his mother is taken to extremes which has an impact on what his sister does for a living, which diapers her baby can wear, and who was responsible for the invention of Coca Cola. Of course in spite of all these lies there exists a strong bond between the mother and her two children. Love is what allows them to forgive one another and it allows them to start a new beginning. Both Alex and his sister forgive their mother for her deception, naturally because of their own.

It becomes increasingly clear as the film continues that the mother initially suspect her children are lying and you’re the end of the film she figures it out. As he walks into her hospital room following her second stroke it becomes clear that Alex’s girlfriend has told her what was going on and in her final moments with her son she pretends to continue believing in his lies, and act which underlies the true strength of their family love.

In reality this font is one deeply seated in Alex’s childhood. The flashbacks to his youth show him desperate to make the world right for his mother and desperate to make his mother proud of him. He often dreamed of being the second man in space from East Germany and took part in the young rocket Builders Association. His childhood anxieties about pleasing his mother and making her proud continued well into adulthood as he continued to seek out his mother’s approval by creating the perfect world for her.

Genre and Style: The Use of Farce in Representing Political Change

The film Goodbye Lenin focuses on many serious issues vanished inside of a comical illusion. By combining elements of satire with the central Love Story between Alex and his mother the director creates a striking contrast between the emotional turmoil of one family’s response to a life-threatening condition and the serious political backdrop to the story. This film, because of this, is best described as a tragicomedy where in the comedy deals with a tragically sad situation in a way that is quite humorous. We laugh as the audience as Alex desperately tried to protect his mother from the “Real World” but at the same time the audience is still moved by her death or strongly affected by how strong the love is between the mother and the son. Of course certain references are only understood by the German audience what other references can make audiences from all over the world laugh out loud.

Alex’s actions become increasingly bizarre. His improbable situation is made particularly entertaining by the Hues of running jokes. And the plot speeds up until it is resolved with the final confession and last stroke of the mother. Throughout this film the audience Smiles at otherwise sad situations. Without realizing it, Alex becomes controlling of his friends and his family in order to protect his mother which relies upon Him using methods of the old communist state. This irony of course indicates that the mother’s original stroke was brought about by seeing her son protesting against the old communist state.

Throughout this film, there are several interesting motifs. Repeatedly we see flashes of space and space travel particularly when we learn about Alex’s childhood and how obsessed he was with space travel early in the film. When his mother first ventured into the outside world after she had her stroke, she sees Lennon in the sky drifting into the sunset. As his statue passes in front of her we see his hand located at the front of the frame as though he is beckoning to her and yet she does not follow him. For the mother coming out into physical reality meant letting go of the imaginary world in which she spent years and have a thing. It is also a chance for her to truly face the reality of her situation and own up to the fact that she abandoned her husband and that the ideals she used to justify the lies she told you her children were no longer valid. But her character is not alone in this. Alex had to face up to the fact that the world he built for his mother was built out of line and would collapse sooner or later.

See director interview archive footage from actual events during this time into this narrative which is a very important technique. The technique encourages the audience to remember that in spite of the community events taking place these events were real. This truly helps the audience to play into the concept of truth and lies. By taking real footage the director is able to demonstrate how easily footage of real events can be manipulated in order to create the response desired. That fake Berlin created by Alex in order to protect his mother embodied the ideal that some parts of Germany truly dreams of achieving. And letting go of this dream amounted to having to let go of many former heroes. For Alex this of course meant letting go of Sigmund Jahn and for his mother it meant letting go of Lenin. Jahn drives away in a taxi and the Lenin is transported into the air. This film truly explores these issues while at the same time telling and emotionally involved and funny story.

Comedy and History: Making Truth a Bit Funnier

Goodbye Lenin is a film which was first released at the 2003 Berlin Film Festival where it was hailed as a great cinematic accomplishment, one which provided insight into a major event in European history as well as social and political issues surrounding that time period. The heart-warming film was so successful in its debut that it earned more money in Germany than the Harry Potter films did in their first month. The title of the film reflects the changing political landscape of the time, with the official sendoff of Soviet influence and the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Wolfgang Becker decided to rely upon Rip Van Winkle satire to follow the story of a single man trying to make history, but with time forced to stand still in order to protect his mother from the truth. The story takes places in 1989, the anniversary of the German Democratic Republic. Alex, the main character, is 22 and lives with his sister Ariane and his mother Christiana in East Germany. His father defected to West Germany ten years prior. Christiana is a highly regarded member of the Socialist party and a heavily involved political activist.

She witnesses her son at an anti-government demonstration the shock of which causes a heart attack and a subsequent coma. She remains in a coma for 8 months. While she is in a coma the political landscape of Germany begins to change; the Berlin Wall has come down, the East German government has been shut down and capitalism has invaded from West Germany.

In an unfortunate turn of events, waking from her coma has brought with it the recommendation by her physicians that no shocking information be revealed lest it cause a relapse. This includes any knowledge about the changes to the political landscape or references to the new government. With this in mind, the family sets out to keep the spirit of the German Democratic Republic alive within their apartment. They mix emotional scenes with farcical stunts to explain away the glimpses of the Western world which Christiana can see. The result of these efforts leaves Christiana in blissful ignorance of the changes to Germany until the end.

As the film comes to an end, Alex and his family are ready for a new and exciting life. Their future is limitless with opportunities to move, get jobs, and maintain possibly better lives than those of their parents. Some critics have argued against the longevity of the film, stating that the story was dragged out longer than it was needed. That said, a counterargument poses that the effect of the film might have been lost with any of the intermediary content cut out.

The Use of Comedy

That being said, in spite of the heavy political turmoil in the plot, it is not all heavy. Throughout this film there are many opportunities for comedy, not all political changes and turmoil. As Alex attempts to recreate and maintain a miniature East Germany for his mother, there are several uses of farce and slapstick comedy as the ludicrous plans are attempted. These plans are made even funnier when set against the backdrop of a city in political turmoil. This is evidenced by one scene in particular, where Alex attempts to reproduce the GDR news bulletins to play to his bedridden mother. To do this, he takes new reports which explain the glimpses of capitalism his mother has already seen and twists the reality such that the story she hears is a manufactured recording of westerners rushing over to East Berlin having heard about the potential benefits of the Socialist system.