LOST ILLUSIONS
by
Howard Schumann
The words German and comedy don't often fit together,
but Good Bye, Lenin! is an exception, a stinging political
satire that shows the impact on a close-knit East German family of the
events that shook Germany to its foundations in 1989. The film, which
won nine prizes at the 2003 German Film Awards, including best director
for Wolfgang Becker, and best actor for Daniel Brühl, interweaves comedy
with a message of political change and the story of a boy's love for
his mother, an unusual brew for those accustomed to Hollywood romantic
comedies that often seem to take place in a vacuum.
The
film opens in East Berlin in 1978. Christiane (Kathrin Sass), a pre-school
teacher, is questioned by the secret police about her husband Robert
(Burghart Klausner) who has defected to West Berlin. After emerging
from a long period of depression that distances her from her son Alex
and daughter Ariane, she becomes a dedicated Socialist, working to improve
the conditions of ordinary people, especially children, and writing
letters complaining of the poor quality of East German products. We
then jump ahead ten years to the autumn of 1989, when Christiane suffers
a heart attack that leaves her in a coma for eight months, after witnessing
her now twenty-year old son Alex (Brühl) being arrested in a street
demonstration promoting reunification.
When
she wakes up from her long sleep, the German Democratic Republic (GRE)
is no longer a political entity, the Berlin Wall has been torn down,
and President Honecher has resigned. Alex is now a satellite dish salesman
with a Russian girlfriend named Lara (Chulpan Khamatova). His sister
Ariane (Maria Simon) works at Burger King. The doctors warn Alex that
any sudden shock could be fatal to his mother's health, so he decides
to pretend that the world is exactly the same as her mother remembers.
He then recreates a pre-1989 world to the finest detail, fixing their
apartment with the same drab furniture exactly the way she remembers,
and scouring the garbage bins to find East German bottles and labels
that he can fill and pretend they are her beloved Spreewald pickles
and other unavailable GDR products.
The
most audacious deception occurs when Alex enlists his colleague Denis
(Florian Lukas), a budding filmmaker, to shoot their own fake news reports
for Christiane to watch on TV, mimicking the style and language of the
official state newscasts of Aktuelle Kamera. The façade of lies threatens
to crumble when Christiane sees a huge Coca-Cola sign and when she watches
West German posters and cars in the street from her window. Alex, keeping
the charade going, explains that the East Germans invented the formula
for Coke which was stolen by the West, and that West Berliners are now
taking refuge in the East by the thousands. Ultimately however, Alex,
a staunch supporter of Western-style living, begins to look back with
nostalgia on the old GDR regime. He longs to return to a past that never
was, admitting, "the GDR I was creating for my mother was more like
the GDR I would have wished." The fantasy he has created becomes more
his own wish fulfillment than a protective cover for his mother.
Although
I recognize that a German audience might appreciate its political subtleties
a bit more, Good Bye, Lenin! still won me over with its thought-provoking
story about the strength of family that transcends political boundaries
and ideologies. The film strikes a light-hearted balance in its portrayal
of East and West, showing both the freedom of the West along with its
crass consumerism, and the social awareness of the East along with its
rigid bureaucracy in which idealism is a dirty word. While the premise
of the film often strains credulity, issues of plausibility can be overlooked
because of its overriding sincerity and humanity.
In
Nouadhibou, a lonely and isolated village sandwiched between the Atlantic
Ocean and the Sahara Desert in the Islamic Republic of Mauritania, Abdullah
(Mohamed Mahmoud Ould Mohamed), a seventeen-year old boy, arrives from
Mali to visit his mother before leaving for Europe. Unable to speak
the local Hassanya language and dressed only in Western clothes, he
is a stranger in a strange land. The film is Waiting for Happiness,
in which Mauritanian director Aderrahmane Sissako portrays the conflict
between Western modernization and local African traditions, basing the
story on his own experience of exile and return. It won International
Film Critics award for best film in the Un Certain Regard section of
Cannes in 2002.
The
film is virtually plotless and without dramatic arc, but filled with
memorable images of a culture whose way of life is threatened by Western
values. Feeling like an outcast, Abdullah sits by an open window watching
a photographer taking portraits, a merchant selling veils, women singing
and flirting, an Asian immigrant's karaoke serenading his girlfriend,
and a mother playing the Kora while teaching traditional songs to her
young daughter. He struggles to learn some Hassanya words from Khatra
(Khatra Ould Abder Kader), a ten-year old electrician's apprentice,
but his heart is not in it. The only bonds he establishes are with Nana,
a prostitute who tells him her story of being rejected by her husband
when she went to visit him in France. Abdullah finally agrees to dress
in native clothes, but his awkward attempts to fit in only underscore
his alienation.
The
film celebrates community, moving between characters and incidents to
explore the traditions that the villagers want to preserve, and their
struggle with symbols of progress. The electrician Maata (Maata Ould
Mohamed Abeid) has difficulty getting electricity to work even with
the help of his young apprentice Khatra. Maata tries to teach Khatra
his trade, but without much success. In a touching sequence, after failing
to install a light bulb in a primitive home, Khatra senses that his
master is feeling bad, puts his arm around the old man's shoulders and
tells him over and over again that everything's going to be all right.
Maata is a surrogate father for the orphaned boy and instructs him in
the ways of the world. In one moving scene, Matta tells him of a friend
who sailed away to Spain and France, never to be heard from again, as
Khatra falls asleep, resting his head against the old man's chest.
Nouadhibou
is a sort of limbo in which travelers wait to begin their journey abroad,
the women wait for a husband, the boys wait to grow up, people come
and go. Backed by the haunting music of Oumou Sangare, Sissako beautifully
captures the day-to-day reality in a part of the world that has been
hidden to Westerners. Images become transfixed in the mind: the windswept
sand; a refugee's body washed ashore; a group of ominous-looking trawlers
anchored off the coast slowly sinking in the mud; pristine whitewashed
buildings shining in the West African heat; an old man walking in the
desert carrying a flickering light bulb. Waiting For Happiness
is a poignant meditation on the transience of life and the conflict
between progress and tradition. Reminiscent of the films of Kiarostami
in it's languid pace and use of nonprofessional actors, the film takes
a while to get you in its grip, but when it does, it refuses to let
go.
©2004 Howard Schumann
CineScene
