In 1990, the Berlin Wall fell, symbolizing the reunification of Germany. After reunification, East Germans faced the challenges of displacement and recovery, many of whom had been busy for decades in the East German era in an instant in vain. The East Germans had to accept new West German laws, east German brands disappeared from the market at an incredible rate, thousands of Eastern businesses were forced to close, and many have had to re-choose careers and struggle to make ends meet... (Berdahl, 1999). In the years since the Berlin Wall disappeared, East Germans have felt more fear than ever- After reunification, East Germans were no longer masters, they are unable to integrate into the "free world" they dreamed of, unable to enjoy the benefits of capitalism, and even unable to get the respect of their fellow citizens. It was as if the East Germans had lost their homeland and had become vagrants in their own land after reunification.
In 2003, Goodbye Lenin was released. In 2003, "Goodbye Lenin" was released. The film looked squarely at that period of history, but chose a nearly neutral attitude. Instead of criticizing and examining, it presented this period of history in an ordinary East German family, and witnessed the changes and development of this period of history from the perspective of ordinary people's life. It tells the story of the son who, in order not to stimulate his mother who suffers from heart disease, hides the fact that the GDR has been disintegrated and carefully shapes a touching story of the "GDR" which is completely different from the changing world outside.
Cultural identity and nostalgia
A number of works about the GDR are coming-of-age stories, including Good bye, Lenin! (Brussig, 2003, cited in Thesz, 2008). This is due to the irreversibility of history. The demise of the GDR, like the passing of childhood, often evokes feelings of nostalgia and loss (Thesz, 2008). Nostalgia is a major theme of the new wave of German films. In response to this wave, a new term - Ostalgie came into being, which refers to the nostalgia of all aspects of social life in East Germany, such as objects, symbols and culture, as well as the reevaluation of the history of East Germany and the criticism of German society, economy and politics brought by it (Dale, 2007). Good-bye, Lenin! also fully embodies the element of nostalgia. For example, there is a scene in the film in which the mother comes home from the hospital and wants to eat "Spreewald" brand of pickled cucumber. However, East Germany has been reinvented, and there are only West German pickles in the supermarket, Desperate, Alex finds an old bottle marked "Spreewald" in a trash can and then fills it with pickles from West Germany. There are many more such symbols, such as the unemployed and disgruntled neighbour uncle and the drunken and corrupt school principal. It can be said that the film gave great tolerance and comfort to the lost and nostalgic East German people through comedy elements.
However, goodbye, Lenin! is not just a kind of sentimental film for the GDR, but more importantly, a positive farewell gesture. The classic scene in the film is when the mother comes out of her home and suddenly sees the demolished statue of Lenin being hoisted by a helicopter over the city. For a moment, the classic gesture of Lenin's statue set against the dazed expression of his mother, Christina, seemed a poignant farewell to an era. Under the underlying words of "looking forward," the film seems to be telling the audience that after the Lenin era has passed, life must move on, even though we may still have a deep attachment to the familiar.
Truth and Lies
The historical narrative of the film is presented through two worlds - the real history and the 'imagined history' of the 79-square-meter room. Here, history, as a split-screen technology, reveals the huge historical gap between the two worlds through their incompatibility and time intersections (Hillman, 2006). The film makes these two originally contradictory Spaces coexist through warm lies, and the TV set carrying information becomes the carrier of "false history". In the play, when his mother asks to watch TV, Alex creates a "socialist" fake news clip by editing it. At his mother's birthday party, his mother saw a huge poster of Coca-Cola hanging outside the window. Alex made up a false history by editing and dub - he claimed that Coca-Cola was invented in the 1950s in the Democratic Republic of Germany, which was held by the western bourgeoisie for many years, and now finally returned to the embrace of the people. Such lies and little farces keep coming up, bringing laughter to the audience and showing them a witty and dutiful son. His blurred state of walking between the two social contradictions of socialism and capitalism to some extent reflected the inner contradictions of the unified German people at that time (Xu,2008).
There is also a lie in the film, and that is the mother's lie. At the end of the film, the mother confesses to the children that their father did not defect, but that they had planned it together, but in the end the mother could not let go of the two children, so she stayed. The lie also seems to be a metaphor and reflection on the nation - a tender view of the division and confrontation.
Director Wolfgang Beck chooses to cut people from the perspective of the individual and the family, using his own film language to re-understand and interpret history, leading the audience to re-examine a time that has been moving away.
Reference list
Berdahl, D. (1999). (N)Ostalgie: for the Present:Memory, Longing, and East German Things.National Museum of Ethnography, 64(2), pp. 192-211
Dale, G. (2007). Heimat, “Ostalgie” and the Stasi: TheGDR in German Cinema,Debatte: Journal of Contemporary Central and Eastern Europe,15(2), 155-175. doi: 10.1080/09651560701483253
Hillman, R (2006). Goodbye Lenin (2003): History inthe Subjunctive.Rethinking History, 10(2),221-237. doi: 10.1080/13642520600648558
Thesz, N. (2008). ADOLESCENCE IN THE ‘OSTALGIE’GENERATION.Oxford German Studies, 37(1),108-123. doi: 10.1179/174592108x334472
Xu, N. (2008). Dong xi de guo shang kou yu mi he de keneng xing- zai jian, Lenin [Wounds in East and West Germany and the possibilityof healing].Movie review, 2, pp.39-46
