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Good Bye Lenin as a Wolfgang Becker’s Masterpiece

Wolfgang Becker’s Good Bye Lenin! reaching out beyond its boundaries and a successful movie worldwide is an enormously profound, simple and funny adventure movie. Sometimes it is regarded as Becker’s Masterpiece.

The director, Wolfgang Becker in the movie Good Bye Lenin has strong personal links and special interest to East Berlin and he has used his complete knowledge, familiarity and personal experience in order to bring more authenticity in the movie. It is due to hard work only Becker being hailing from West German is successful in portraying the East culture accurately in the movie. In an Interview Becker also admitted that he visited east many times while living in Berlin in 1980s. In order to recreate East Berlin and to bring authenticity Becker successfully managed to take his audience 10 years back and spent whole budget allocated for the movie in just 2 weeks.

He used to take the testimonies of the people who witnessed the fall of East Berlin wall and kept a keen eye on the historical past of East Berlin not because he wanted to make a film but he also developed a personal interest in going to that depth. The movie provides a deep insight into the relationships, family bonds and different priorities in life with a historical background as the basis. It is very rare when a movie incite those thoughts in the Viewers.

In Good Bye Lenin, Becker never shows favoritisms between East and West German but have compassion for Alex’s spot. Through the character of Alex, director Becker try to depict the situation of young man stuck in the middle of coming of age and his self-constructed fictional world.

Becker has been criticised many times on this ground for proving a little knowledge about the history in the movie. The main reason behind that is Becker’s insight and personal understanding. He finds no interest in making films based on public figures or heroes rather he prefer to make the movie  based on fiction depicting sever issues and its influence on the common people.

Director and co-screenwriter Wolfgang Becker doesn’t make story too sweet and there’s some startling softness and honesty. Each character in the movie feels honest and real. Becker skill fully manages to strike the balance between the characters. Character of Alex as a young enthusiastic, devoted guy and Christiane as a avid communist or we can say too idealistic, are both convincing and appealing, and where as Ariane’s character is more realistic and easily adaptable to western environment and Character of Lara as a sympathetic student nurse who in starting helps Alex and then develop a love relationship with him. As this movie as surfeit of level, each characters can be related to different levels.
Becker has made this movie on a slow pace and once he revealed that it took 7 years to make this movie and he went to every depth and research to make this movie possible. He wanted to show is audience more than the German reunification. He calls this movie a “Universal Movie” as the movie can be understood and applauded by audience in and outside Germany. This movie is a narrative fiction, Tragic-Drama-comedy and based on an important European historical event. This movie is mainly a satire and poke fun on the irrationality of political system. Director Wolfgang received the Best Director award for this movie. The movie which topped the German Box office and even on the box offices of other countries and received many prominent awards and success worldwide, is seriously Becker’s Masterpiece indeed.