With the release of the film Goodbye, Lenin! (Arndt & Becker, 2003), Germany set off a wave of East German memories. A new term has been coined in response to this craze-- Ostalgie. Ostalgie is a combination of Osten (East) and Nostalgie, which expresses the nostalgia and yearning for the former East Germany (Enns, 2007).
The story is set against the back drop of an event that has a profound impact on German history -- the fall of the Berlin Wall. The film starts from the story of an ordinary family and tells the story of the impact of the historical event of German reunification on ordinary people. It gets rid of the strong political and ideological color and is described from an objective and neutral perspective to witness the change and development of this period of history through the lives of ordinary people.
At the beginning of the film, Alex tells the story of an East German family before and after German reunification in the form of a first-person autobiography. This perspective of personal narrative in the context of grand historical narrative reflects history and politics into the daily lives of ordinary people, and shifts the audience's attention to social change to its impact on personal life. The film skillfully integrates history and family, the fate of the country and the fate of the family together. Cook (2007) indicates that the simultaneous linkages between personal plots and the epoch-making events leading to German reunification provide a historical dimension to the film's story.
Alex's mother was an excellent socialist model, and she did not have the courage to give up the faith she fought for and chose to separate from her husband who went to West Germany, leading to the separation of the family. In Alex's words, “mother married herself to the socialist motherland from then on”. However, his father, who was spite at work because he was not a Party member, went to West Germany in order to seek a better space for survival and development. But he did not expect that his wife eventually chose to stay in East Germany with their children. Thus, family figures can be seen as historical and political metaphors and symbols -- mother and father represent East and West Germany, respectively, and the irrelationships and contradictions can mirror those of East and West German society.
The film also shows the economic and political status quo of East Germany after it was transformed by West German capitalism. For example, Alex lost his job in a television repair shop and was forced to work as a salesman; the "Young Pioneers", a symbol of selflessness, however, demanded Alex‘s money to sing; the study of Marxist political economy Alex's sister can only be a saleswoman of the Burger Kingfast-food restaurant; the headmaster of mother's school lost his job and began to drink heavily; the first East German cosmonaut whom Alex had idolized had to drive a taxi. After the reunification of Germany, the demise of the countrymade East Germans suddenly lose their original identity, work, social statusand normal family life. They were filled with a strong sense of loss and confused about the future.
Goodbye, Lenin! Originally titled 79 qm DDR, which can be seen as the best condensed generalization of the story plot. Alex painstakingly restored the "East German era" in the small room, and he takes pains to conceal a world that has changed so that his mother would not suffer any fatal stimulation after waking. This 79-square-meter room is not only a real space, but also a spiritual space, because only here can people see the shadow of the past good life. The social upheaval is carefully blocked by the door of this small room, and the farce of "GDR is still thriving" is played out (figure 1). Alex finds old bottles in the garbage for his mother to replace Mocca Fix Gold coffee and Spreewaldgurke,and pours West German food into East German bottles. Alex pays young pioneers to sing revolutionary songs to celebrate his mother's birthday, and he lies that Coca-Cola is a socialist invention. In the small world of "home-madenews", created by Alex as cameraman and Denis as announcer, history seems to have stopped in the GDR. Uecker (2007) argues that Alex turns the crash ofthe GDR into a socialist fantasy of successful reform. Alex became anemotionally captive puppeteer, obsessed with his own creation, and he admitted that the German Democratic Republic he had created was turning out to be whathe had hoped (Hillman, 2006).
There's a scene in the movie when Alex's mother is walking down the street, she is be wildered by swastikas in elevators, advertisements for Swedish IKEA, and trading centers for West German car brands. The huge, demolishedstatue of Lenin is hoisted by helicopter over the city (figure 2), its armpointing forward, together with the mother's blank expression, this scene as if to question the future direction of Germany, the right hand raised as if to wave goodbye to her.
In addition, the plot of Germany's World Cup victory shown in the film is also very important. After being told that the exchange deadline had expired, and the 400,000 East German marks his mother had accumulated in her life had become waste paper, Alex cursed at the West Germans and shouted angrily on the roof, which reflected a kind of vent of resentment towards the West Germans. But Alex's anger dissipates after he suddenly sees the fireworks in the sky, and the national mood of the German people rises in the euphoria of winning the World Cup (figure 3 & figure 4). As he said, "a smallfootball, so that the divided country and social development together, so that the country as a whole common development."
At the end of the film, the ashes of the mother were put into the simulated rocket of childhood and lit up the night sky together with the fireworks. Both the mother and East Germany had disappeared into the long river of history. A story full of love and lies came to an end, as well as completing the commemoration of an era that transcended ideology and nation-state.
Reference
Arndt, S. (Producer), & Becker, W. (Director). (2003).Good Bye, Lenin! [Motion Picture]. Germany: Westdeutscher Rundfunk.
Cook, R. F.(2007). Good Bye, Lenin!: Free-Market Nostalgia for Socialist Consumerism.Seminar: A Journal of Germanic Studies, 43(2), 206-219. https://doi-org.ez.xjtlu.edu.cn/10.1353/smr.2007.0027
Enns, A. (2007). Thepolitics of Ostalgie: post-socialist nostalgia in recent German film.Screen, 48(4), 475-491. https://doi.org/10.1093/screen/hjm049
Hillman, R. (2006). Goodbye Lenin (2003): History in the subjunctive.Rethinking History, 10(2), 221-237. https://doi-org.ez.xjtlu.edu.cn/10.1080/13642520600648558
Uecker, M. (2007). Fractured families united countries? Family, nostalgia and nation-building in Das Wunder von Bern and Goodbye Lenin! New Cinemas: Journal of Contemporary Film, 5(3), 189-200. https://doi-org.ez.xjtlu.edu.cn/10.1386/ncin.5.3.189_1