Film Analysis : Good Bye Lenin

East Germany, its demise relayed through the mass media of recent history, has in popular consciousness been posited as negative, a corrupt bulwark of the last dying days of Communism in Eastern Europe, barren and silent. The other Germany to its West, its citizens free, was striding confidently ahead into the millennium. Recent cinema has sought to examine re-unification, the Wolfgang Becker film Goodbye Lenin! (2003) a recent example of such an investigation into the past through cinema. In this essay I will look at the film and the narrative techniques it uses, probing whether it portrays the East German nation as positive or

Set at the end of the Cold War in East Germany, the movie Goodbye Lenin is the story of a young man, Alex, trying to protect his mother, Christiane, who just spent the last eight months in a coma. Christiane is a personification of the values and ideology of socialism. She carries them out in her interactions with society, and is very hopeful towards the success of the regime. During her absence, the fall of the Berlin Wall and of the German Democratic Republic leads to a radical and turbulent change in society: the fall of socialism and the triumph of capitalism. Because of the shocking effect of such information and the danger of another heart attack, Alex creates for Christiane an ideological form of socialism. Fundamental themes in the movie are the difference between ideal and reality of socialism, as well as the positive and negative aspects of the transition to free market capitalism. Such themes are carried out through a juxtaposition of an ideal society and its reality in the form of a constructed reality of socialism. This idealized version of socialism served as an oasis from the chaotic transition from a problematic socialist regime to free market capitalism.

Lastly, there were many things to learn and take from the film, Good-bye, Lenin. I learned how the sudden switch to capitalism from socialism affected the citizens of East Germany, especially how the old socialists were negatively affected. Besides that, I feel as if I already knew about most of what the film went over through the AP Euro history course. The only thing that really surprised me was when the mother admitted that Alex and his sister’s father did not actually cross to West Berlin over a woman. Rather, the father was harassed by the GDR because he was not a

In Where the World Ended, Daphne Berdahl explores via ethnographic study the creation and evolution of identities in the town of Kella. Located within the 500-meter Schutzstreifen along the Grenze (the inter-German border during the Cold War) residents of Kella experienced strict surveillance from the German Democratic Republic (GDR) and lived with additional regulations. Berdahl presents Kella as floating between the East and West; however, the impenetrability of the inter-German border from 1952 to 1989 instituted Eastern economic and cultural practices in Kella until the entire GDR experienced the fall of socialism. In this paper, I will demonstrate that Berdahl operates under the flawed assumption that Kella’s geographic location within

"We could have been brothers, but they never want us to know that" (Mann, 1979). The 1979 television film All Quiet on the Western Front depicts the story of Paul Bauman, a German soldier fresh out of high school who decided to enlist for World War I. Throughout the course of the film, viewers see the general events of World War I from the eyes of the “losers”, the Germans. Through the use of a German perspective, the portrayal of the horrors of war, and showing the difference of opinions back home and on the front, All Quiet on the Western Front advocates for a more realistic approach for the dramatization of war and learning an unbiased history.

Accepting symbolic boundaries fosters what become social boundaries. Social boundaries are objective, socially constructed limitations or guidelines that direct people’s thoughts, actions and functions in society by telling people what is socially acceptable and what is not. In accordance with determining what is socially acceptable, symbolic boundaries reinforce social inequalities by determining what people do and do not have access to in terms of resources. Lamont and Molnar explain this transition from symbolic boundaries to social boundaries and vice-versa through the construction and deconstruction of the Berlin Wall. Germany symbolically split into two groups, treating each other as opposing, as “the disappearance of the territorial boundary left almost intact the deep divide between former East and Western Germans as differences continue to be reproduced through a myriad of symbolic boundaries” (2002:184). Here, symbolic boundaries are the classification of differences between East and West Germans through verbal treatment of one another, social expectations and classifications. Widely accepting the symbolic boundary created inequality by regulating what is socially acceptable and unacceptable for Eastern or Western Germans and determining the available resources for them. Symbolic

Historians constantly discuss the establishment of communism in Eastern Europe following World War II, a major topic being the Soviet Union’s occupation of The German Democratic Republic (GDR). The governing of the GDR by the Socialist Unity Party (SED) is frequently analysed, particularly operations against any perceived resistance to the stability of a socialist state. Erica Riemann was one perceived enemy, serving over eight years as a political prisoner after drawing a bow on a picture of Josef Stalin when she was fourteen, and she provides oral testimony of her experiences nearly fifty years later (Molloy 2009). This essay argues that the main value of Riemann’s testimony is an insight into the lengths that the SED went to in order to

Ronald Reagan, in his speech, (“Berlin Wall”, 1987), the former governor and President of the United States and at the time of the Cold War, “ the most magnetic public figure in the nation”(encyclopedia.com) elucidates to his audience the consequences of residing under the influence of the Soviet Union. Reagan supports his assertion through the use of various rhetorical devices to generate logos, ethos, and pathos. His purpose is to incite a feeling of an injustice done to the people of Berlin and Soviet Allies and to bring down the Berlin Wall as “the most visible symbol of the decades-long Cold War”(History.com) between the Americans and the Soviets during the Cold War. Reagan writes in perfervid tone generated toward the people of Berlin and other Soviet allies in hopes of bringing the Cold War to an end and it is reported by CBS News that he successfully “bolstered the morale of the pro-democracy movement in East Germany”(Brinkley).

Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck’s film The Lives of Other’s (2005) is set in East Berlin during the socialist reign from November 1984, up until the fall of the Berlin wall in 1989. The political context plays a significance role not only in the film’s subject matter but also in its cinematography, which exploits the voyeuristic tendencies of the audience, reflecting the surveillance of the Stasi Secret Police officers. The film follows a loyal socialist and playwright, Georg Dreyman who becomes subject (along with actor girlfriend Christa-Maria Sieland) to extensive Stasi surveillance due to his association with subversive artists such as Paul Hauser and Albert Jerska. Hauptman Gerd Weisler is the accomplished Stasi officer assigned to

Goodbye Lenin! Final Essay In Goodbye Lenin! the plot of keeping a GDR (German Democratic Republic) loving mother from knowing the truth is supported by the actual difficulties of transitioning to a unified Germany. Early in the film, the characters frantically look for their mother’s stash of GDR currency in their modest apartment, when they finally find it, it’s too late to convert.

Movies created in Soviet Russia were prominently used as a tool for propaganda, “The Fall of Berlin,” used contrast to idealize Soviet Russia by downplaying Germany and Hitler. “The Fall of Berlin” was released in 1950, right after World War II ended. The film is Soviet propaganda that was thought to insure faith within the Russian population, as Stalin wanted Soviet Russia to believe in him. The movie characterized Stalin with such gratitude and admiration, even I believed he was a good leader.

The literal dislocation between East and West Germany was a major factor in the suffering of German cinema

In contrast to the desolate picture life in East Berlin painted, the economy of West Germany, which also included West Berlin, was rebounding and becoming quite strong. West Berlin’s businesses were booming, and their industry products were readily and rapidly bought by its resident who were eager to obtain the products and goods they had so long been deprived of previously, as a result of World War II.10 This new and heightening demand for goods pushed wages up quickly, and many new jobs were created with the development of new housing units and other construction enterprises.11 Movies, plays, and concerts were also available for West Berlin residents to enjoy, and overall life in West Berlin was good. However, life on the West side wasn’t all fun and games. Their city was still divided, and families were still separated. To the children of West Berlin residents, East Berlin was hidden from view and shrouded in mystery, their only knowledge of the other side coming through school or some form of media. It seemed they constantly asked themselves the question, “ Will the lives of East and West Germans forever be so vastly different and separate?”

As we look deeper into the historical contexts that came about in Germany during the 1920’s, Germany was confined due to the isolation the country was experiencing during World War I. During this solitude, the German government banned foreign films. German Expressionism was formed in result of the conclusion of World War I which compelled Germany to establish its own style of cinema. German Expressionist films produced in the Weimar Republic

Therefore, this film is not only a testimony about the German past but also the German present. It displays the irrational annihilation of six young Germans at the end of WWII, summoning up a very agonizing recollection of Nazi Germany’s futile effort to turn back the Allied invasion by hurling teenage boys into the