"The future lay in our hands. Uncertain, yet promising."

Year: 2003

Directed by: Wolfgang Becker

Written by: Bernd Lichtenberg, Wolfgang Becker, Achim von Borries, Hendrik Handloegten & Christoph Silber

A mother wakes up after 8-month coma. Her son is trying his best trying to hide the fact that their home land, DDR, is now gone.

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In philosophy class we had two choices: go watch Spirited Away or Goodbye Lenin after school. If we watched it in school, we didn't have to actually write anything about it, but if we watched either of those movies at home, we had to write about them. I thought I'd see this one at school, but then I realised I'd write at least this blog post about it, so why not watch it at home and write properly. After all I haven't really written anything interesting on my blog for a while, and NaNoWriMo is slowing me down even more.

The voice-over narration in this movie is gold. It was absolutely well written, perhaps not entirely realistic, but it still was excellent. 

The soundtrack of this movie was interesting - mostly the music played in the beginning and in the end. It gave a different feeling to the movie than the movie itself did. The beginning made me think the movie would be much deeper and sadder, and the end made me think the movie was deeper than sadder than it was. It's an interesting effect.

This movie shows very well how hard it would be trying to live in the past these days. This movie took place in the 1990s. Think about how hard it would be to live that kind of life in this day and age? Think about the Internet and the amount of information coming from every possible source. It would be close to impossible. 

It's interesting to see how the main character Alex developed, not so much during the story, but comparing his childhood to the "current" for the main part of the movie. A child living in DDR was hopeful, thinking the nation is the greatest and all that. The young adult was much more cynical towards DDR, but still seemed to appreciate it somehow. Especially when Alex does all those things for mother... Was it all for her mother? Was it partially for himself? How greatly? 

☆☆☆☆☆☆☆

7 / 10