Imagine your homeland was dismantled around you in a matter of months. However shoddy it had been, you'd inevitably feel a sense of displacement. (It's as if Britain were 'reunited' with France and almost overnight there were no plastic bags or Australian wine in the supermarkets and suddenly everybody felt they had to do their best to be rude beyond the call of duty!)
Goodbye Lenin! is much more moving than it is outright hilarious, which was a surprise as for some reason I had expected somewhat lighter comedy. The central 'Rip Van Winkle' plot device is a bit fanciful , but undoubtedly handy for getting across a range of both touching and serious points about the demise of the DDR. The country itself might have been crap, but some of its more ingenuous lost ideals are shown to merit poignant reflection. I'm sure generations of Germans will look back on this strangely sad satire as a work of some significance.
Typical of a European film, there is no full restoration of equilibrium at the end for Alex and his family, and here that is very much part of the point.
And in a strange parallel with the plot the makers of the film had to use CGI to remove evidence of Berlin's unchecked westernisation since 1990.
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