Becker's Goodbye, Lenin

Similarly, Goodbye, Lenin illustrates this manifestation of ones country betraying their original ideals and foundations. Reducing this concept in personalized terms once again, the director, Becker, utilizes Alex’s older sister, Ariane, to portray the treachery of the East German national identity. For instance, she adapts to westernization after the Berlin Wall falls, becoming the poster-girl for the immersion of fast food (specifically in this example; Burger King) in the East. In a particular scene, Alex mentions in an indignant manner how she gave up studying economics in college to do so. Consequently, her conformity to the western ways makes Alex hold a resentment against her. He sees her adaptation as giving up on their mother, even …show more content…

Transcending this betrayal from his sister, Alex faces the true source of his resentment in the bank scene. The siblings finally find their mother’s bank book to exchange the currency from East to West German Mark after the integration. In the scene, the teller refuses to exchange it, claiming the money is “useless”. Alex rises in anger at the comment, and he and his sister are escorted out of the bank, all the while he shouts, “What are you staring at? It was your money too!” to the other customers. By extension, he is a reflection of the East German people feeling as if they were “sold down the river” by their own nation, after having, “worked 40 years for this” as Alex’s old neighbor repeatedly says throughout the …show more content…

However, while the East tends to externalize problems, demonstrated in Alex’s anger, the West shows trends of internalizing symptoms, which is common on a smaller home scale of “divorced-family children,” (Kelly, 50). Due to this, that value transforms to a question of self-worth manifesting itself through low self-esteem and depression. “Why am I even alive?” thought a West German on the subway while Damiel listened in. Even Marion expresses these same symptoms in her own thoughts of, “emptiness, fear, fear,” and debating, “who are you?”. The viewer also experiences this conflict between empty and meaningful existence through the Angel Cassiel, who encounters a young man about to commit suicide. The young West German’s thoughts are reminiscent on the days he could visit both the East and the West in the same day, of how he had a purpose before. His purpose, a lover, now resides on the other side of the wall, suddenly cut off the meaning of his existence if he could no longer be with her. As an angel, it is Cassiel’s purpose to help this man, does not get the opportunity before the man pushes himself off the building. To illustrate his hollow feeling of life as he knew it, the character’s final words were; “Here I go, but why?”. Following this theme of searching for purpose, the characters in Wings of Desire struggle with their own value in the life they