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This
week's featured review & film archive
Sarah Jaffe reviews
independent and foreign films,
in addition to reporting the latest buzz behind
Colorado's film festivals.
Goodbye Lenin! (2003, Wolfgang
Becker)
The trailer for "Goodbye, Lenin!" made
the movie seem like it would be broad comedy,
so I was surprised at how serious it actually
was. Director Wolfgang Becker goes for the laughs
occasionally, but manages to retain the humanity
and social critique.
Alex (Daniel Bruhl) wanted to be a cosmonaut
while growing up in communist East Germany. He
ended up a TV repairman, living at home with his
fervent socialist mother, Christiane (Katrin Sass),
college student sister Ariane (Maria Simon) and
her baby. Christiane happens to see a protest
against the government one night and suffers a
heart attack that sends her into an eight-month
coma. She's unconscious while the Berlin Wall
comes down, and capitalism invades East Germany.
When she wakes, doctors warn Alex and Ariane that
any excitement could send her back into critical
condition. Alex sets out to create a world for
her in which the wall never fell, but of course
it becomes harder and harder to do.
In America, this could be the setting for an
Adam Sandler movie, but in the hands of a German
filmmaker, it instead becomes at once an insightful
critique of capitalism, and a poignant family
drama. Daniel Bruhl brings to life a boy who is
at once falling in love with a new world (and
a beautiful nurse, played by Chulpan Khamatova)
and clinging to an old one, and Katrin Sass has
the kind of beauty found in women who have no
fear of growing old--she looks like an older Diane
Lane, and is no less gorgeous for the lines in
her face. This is the kind of movie that makes
you think while making you laugh, and it's interesting
to see the things we take for granted in oh-so-capitalist
America (Coca-cola billboards, fast food burger
chains, tacky '80's clothing) through the eyes
of someone who's never dealt with such things.
It brings home the fact that what is really important
is family, while questioning the idea of lying
to protect someone, clinging to the past, and
the importance of material things.
Now Playing at the Mayan Theater - go to www.landmarktheaters.com
for showtimes
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