Good Bye Lenin!

Once again I choose an old movie from YouTube. Why? Because it's easier to me to found it and lucky me, this German movie has a English subtitle. I love German because I watched World Cup 2006 and they are a tough team. I have learn this language before. But I just can remember like Ich Liebe Dich (I Love You), Danke ( Thanks) and Guten Morgen ( Good Morning). And I love Daniel Brühl too. He also played on The Bourne Ultimatum.


The story tells about Alex lives with his sister, Ariane, his mother, Christiane, and Ariane's infant daughter, Paula. His father fled to the West in 1978, abandoning the family. In his absence, Christiane has become an ardent idealist and supporter of the ruling Socialist Unity Party of Germany (the Party). When she sees Alex being arrested in an anti-government demonstration, she suffers a near-fatal heart attack and falls into a coma.

After eight months and the Berlin Wall falls, Christiane awakes, but is severely weakened both physically and mentally. Her doctor asserts that any shock might cause another, possibly fatal, heart attack. Alex realizes that the discovery of recent events would be too much for her to bear, and so sets out to maintain the illusion that things are as before in the German Democratic Republic.

Their deception is successful, albeit increasingly complicated and elaborate. Dennis, Alex edits old tapes of East German news broadcasts and creates fake reports on TV to explain these odd events. Christiane reveals her own secret; her husband had fled because the Party had been increasingly oppressing him, and the plan had been for the rest of the family to join him in West Berlin. However, Christiane, fearing the government would take away Alex and Ariane if things went wrong, chose to stay in the East. She has come to regret the decision over time.

Christiane relapses shortly afterward and is taken back to the hospital. After meeting his father for the first time in years, Alex convinces him to meet Christiane again. Under pressure to reveal the truth about the fall of the East, Alex creates a final fake news segment. Right before the family arrives to see the report on a hospital TV, Alex's nurse girlfriend Lara quietly tells Christiane the truth about the German reunification. Christiane understands then how much her son has gone through to create another world for her, how much he loves her, and so she decides to not reveal that she knows the truth.

Christiane dies peacefully three days later, by coincidence on the day of full official German reunification, and her ashes are scattered in the wind, despite this being illegal in both East and West Germany.

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I like a history movie like this. It's not a history movie after all. But I got the info about Germany's fact a little by little from this movie. In fact I can't see the differences between the East and the West. Yeah, just see the bright or the gloomy.