Comedy

Drama

Good Bye, Lenin!

X Filme Creative Pool

ARTE

Germany

Deutsch

Daniel Brühl

Katrin Sass

Chulpan Khamatova

Maria Simon

Florian Lukas

Alexander Beyer

Burghart Klaußner

Michael Gwisdek

Christine Schorn

Jürgen Holtz

Jochen Stern

Stefan Walz

Eberhard Kirchberg

Hans-Uwe Bauer

Nico Ledermueller

Jelena Kratz

Laureen Hatscher

Felicitas Hatscher

Martin Brambach

Michael Gerber

Robert Störr

Philipp Kupfer

Ernst-Georg Schwill

Rainer Werner

Marc Bischoff

Horst-Dieter Stork

Hartmut Kuley

Peter Kurth

Ditmar Bieseke

Arndt Schwering-Sohnrey

Dirk Prinz

Jürgen Vogel

Elke Werner

Regina Ziebach

Wolfgang Stein

Mennan Yapo

Fritz Roth

Maximilian Brunow

Bojan Heyn

Armin Dillenberger

Denys Darahan

Bastian Lang

Lothar Schlichthar

Alexander Reed

Ute Michel

Svea Timander

Hanna Schwamborn

Rafael Hübner

Michael Berge

Wolfgang Becker

Manuela Stehr

Yann Tiersen

Katja De Bock

Stefan Arndt

Bernd Lichtenberg

Martin Kukula

Peter R. Adam

Simone Bär

Lothar Holler

Andreas Schreitmüller

Marcos Kantis

Chris Silber

Achim von Borries

Hendrik Handloegten

Christian Schaefer

Christine Seehofer

Conny Klein

Dirk Jacob

Heike Merker

Michael Konstabel

Thorsten Thiesse

Aenne Plaumann

Sandra Scheucher

Andro Steinborn

Klemens Becker

Lena Lazzarotto

Matthias Klemme

Tommy Schulz

Helmut Prein

Dirk Plamböck

Jörn Poetzl

Kuen-Il Song

Kai-Uwe Koch

Birger Laube

Lars Ginzel

Björn Rehbein

Sven Asamoa

Jörg Widmer

Birgit Guðjónsdóttir

Andrea Eisensee

Sarah Gross

Susanne Boeing

Marcus Welsch

Ralph Kaechele

CinemaSerf

Daniel Brühl is on good form here in this entirely far-fetched but enjoyable drama. He and his sister “Ariane” (Maria Simon) live in East Germany with their proud citizen mother (Katrin Sass) who has just been awarded a special medal for her socialist public-mindedness. The thing is, it is 1989 and the whole Honecker regime is beginning to totter. People are on the streets and one of them just happens to be “Alex”. When he gets himself apprehended by the police on the street, she tries to intervene but only manages to end up in a coma. He is promptly released and for a while he and his sister and her boyfriend have to live their lives whilst she breathes through hospital tubes. Then, some months later, she wakes up. The doctors have advised that she should be kept rested and peaceful, and so her kinder decide that maybe now is not the best time to tell her that the Berlin Wall is now a pile of rubble and the Trabant she has longed for could now be a VW! How on Earth can they keep such momentous developments from the woman, especially when it’s all that is on the television Well that’s where he recruits the help of her nurse/his girlfriend “Lara” (Chulpan Khamatova) and his creative pal “Denis” (the frequently scene-stealing Florian Lukas) and next thing she is eating the same old stuff, the flat is restored to it’s 1980s look and somehow they are managing to rig the news broadcasts so all they report are the glories of the DDR. How long can they keep it up, though? Sooner or later she is going to want to go outside, or even look out of the window. Although the whole thing does border on the preposterous a bit, it does ask just how far we would go to shield a loved one from stress and trauma, and as the antics get more and more daft Brühl steps up to the plate entertainingly. It also doesn’t shy away from addressing the issues facing a population that had hitherto relied up the state for so much, and that now had to fend for itself in a much more obvious dog-eat-dog fashion. This is especially exemplified when their currency is to be merged with the Deutsch Mark and they can’t find her savings! By creating such ridiculous scenarios, this quite comically shows up the absurdity of dogmatic politics and, to a certain extent, of family too and Bernd Lichtenburg’s sharp script gives just about everyone some powerfully natural dialogue to make us laugh and think. In the end, though, it’s all about Brühl and he delivers. This is worth a couple of hours.

Mark Kermode reviews Good Bye, Lenin! (2003) | BFI Player

Goodbye Lenin - Trailer #1

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Good Bye, Lenin!

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Cast

Daniel Brühl

Katrin Sass

Chulpan Khamatova

Maria Simon

Florian Lukas

Alexander Beyer

Burghart Klaußner

Michael Gwisdek

Christine Schorn

Jürgen Holtz

Box office

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