No-Ostalgie

Rarely has my interested been piqued so much by a film that almost immediately after its conclusion I charge out to write something about watching it. The last such instance, The Pianist produced an oeuvre a few thousand words long. Though this will not be of such an epic proportion, Good Bye, Lenin (a curiously comic title for a seriously tragic film) now ranks among some of the films that I appreciate the most.

Naturally, such an explosion of interest can only be fed by a well of prior understanding - a penchant for many things German and hence a certain affection for the phenomenon of "Ostalgie", the nostalgia for the old German Democratic Republic (though this seems laughably ironic, the capitalist peddling of gaudy trinkets based upon the stolid ideologies and icons of its mortal enemy socialism). On its surface, Lenin seems to be little more than a P.T. Barnum circus of Ostalgie.

We are fed with images of the GDR that we have come to know and expect; the tatty architecture, sputtering Trabants, and the border guards doing their pompous and sinister changing of the guard. The lost world of the GDR, like the city of Pompeii or Babylon, gone forever but so well-documented and fondly remembered (in some ways, at least), initially appears so distant that the people in the street might as well be discussing the Treaty of Versailles.

In such a setting, a Rip van Winkle like parable unfolds. The plot may easily be found anywhere on the internet, so I shan't transcribe it here. It is plain that Alex's mother may be seen as a personal analogue of the political entity of the GDR, and the subsequent story is a piquant interweave of these two elements, inseparable, and perhaps thus also reminiscent of the Stasi-dominated lives of GDR citizens.

Particular elements of Alex's ensuing crusade to create a microcosm of the old order in his mother's bedroom are quite striking, ranging from the recreation of state-supermarket fare (and their awful, embarrassing brand names) to the cover up about the Coca-Cola (Number 1 Class enemy) billboard that his mother accidentally glimpsed. While these provide comic relief, they are hardly funny for the right reasons: (of course, also another propensity of mine to subvert plain humour into something altogether more serious and forbidding, and this tends to cheese people off a lot) without knowing it, Alex has mobilised almost every agency of a communist state. He distorts and concocts the news media; he coerces people into acting against their real natures and principles by a mixture of bullying and emotional blackmail, manipulating their loyalty to a "leader" (or father) figure. It is a farce, founded on dishonesty, like the old regime itself. And Alex has become the neurotic, control-freak prime minister, acting on behalf of an ageing, debilitated monarch.

It's probably not coincidental that Alex's mother had her heart attack just shortly before the real collapse of the GDR. Indeed, the parallels run further than that, with the second heart attack right before the second (and final, irreversible) act of official reunification. Just before the end of her natural life, or the end of the life of the GDR, or even the end of the life of Alex's scam, Alex's mother reveals that her communist sympathies were all a sham, a lie, all a symptom of denial, just like the GDR, just like Alex's charade.

So indeed, there is a pall of defeat, a feeling of wasted life near the end that shows Lenin to be more than a comedy. But even in the stirring notes of "Die DDR Hymne", like all (West, for no one could expect anyone from the East to do something apologist like this) German works about the reunification and facing up to history, one could pick up a certain sense of nationhood and German unity that is usually the keynote of most such literature.

It's always pleasurable that one can find something that is memorable, that stirs one in an unique way that only what one most treasures can, and then keep it close to one's heart, filling up the box that is reserved exclusively for these things and these things alone. For all its poignancy, and striking resonance, Good Bye, Lenin can only continue to remain in the special box of mine.

(Oh please, it's just a bloody comedy, stop it already)