Wednesday, April 01, 2009

Have you seen this film? Goodbye Lenin! It was on telly very late a little while ago. I don’t know why I started watching it – the title suggests something kinda boring, so why would I watch that? ;-)

But start watching it I did and it is lovely. So much that I stayed up way beyond my bedtime to watch it all.

From the amazon.co.uk description

The movie starts in East Germany before the fall of communism; our hero, Alex, describes how his mother, a true believer in the communist cause, has a heart attack when she sees him being clubbed by police at a protest. She falls into a coma for eight months--during which the Berlin Wall comes down. When she awakens, her fragile health must avoid any shocks, so Alex creates an illusive reality around his bedridden mother to convince her that communism is still alive. Goodbye, Lenin! delicately balances wry satire with its rich investment in the lives of Alex, his mother, and other characters around them.

That is a pretty good description of the film, but it doesn’t, of course, give you a description of what it is like watching it. And I am not sure I can describe it. It is kinda nostalgic – not because I lived in East Germany, but because I remember all that with the Wall very vividly. Seeing all those happy, happy people on telly. And the stories of families that were reunited after all those years.

Of course, that is not what the film is about, so er, yeah. It is a really, really lovely film. Very moving. And kind of poetic too. In some ways it reminds me of Amelie.

Don’t let the fact that it is set in East Germany fool you. It is not gray and boring. There are some colourful characters and singing too! It is funny too, all the things Alex does to fool his mother. And it’s a love story too.

Go rent or buy this film- you won’t regret it!

Labels: film