In grade school, I had a history teacher who was quite proud of a certain classroom artifact. It was an old map of Europe, dating from before Germany had split into east and west. He refused to get a new one on the grounds that someday, he insisted, the two sides would reunite and the map would be correct again. The class scoffed at him, but then one day in November of 1989, we walked in and had quite a surprise.
I can only imagine the kind of national confusion that the fall of the Berlin wall and the collapse of communism had on the people of Germany, but Good bye, Lenin! gives me some idea. Writer-director Wolfgang Becker presupposes a bizarre circumstance under which a devout socialist (Katrin Sass) falls into a coma shortly before reunification, only to awaken several months later in a completely different world.
Her doctor advises her children to spare her any distress, as the slightest shock could be fatal. Her son, Alex (Daniel Brühl), takes this advice to the extreme, deciding not to tell her about current events. The news that her beloved German Democratic Republic is no more surely would kill her.
Instead, he practically quarantines her in the bedroom, closing the curtains to keep her from noticing the giant Coca-Cola sign hanging outside. He then goes about the impossible task of trying to resurrect the East Berlin which she has known her whole life. Containers of discontinued goods are cleaned and filled with reciprocated products, and he goes so far as to shoot fake news footage, feeding it into her TV from a hidden VCR, along with tapes of old shows.
The film gets most of its comedy from watching Alex spin further and further out of control, vainly trying to construct an alternate reality from rapidly disappearing pieces of history. It's basically a one-joke premise, but it goes far on the performances; especially the sultry Chulpan Khamatova as the mother's nurse who later becomes involved with Alex.
Stretched out to feature length, the movie's simple narrative loses some steam. It's more amusing than funny, though a native East Berliner might appreciate more of the references. It does, however, offer a more enjoyable history lesson than any I had in school.