Ostalgie is nice word, which I'd imagine is a portmanteau[1] of nostalgia and ost (east), which represents some of the warmth many feel towards the East German times. I remember coming across it when I went to Berlin for the first (and, presently, only) time which was embodied by the Ampelmann[2]. phenomenon.
Good Bye Lenin falls into the category of ostalgie with its relatively warm depiction of the 1980s. Following a young man, Alex (played by Daniel Brühl, seen recently in Rush), through his memories of childhood, initially, there is a sepia tinge that is almost inherent with the voiceover and music bed. The basic theme of the story is directly about nostalgia as the story revolves around the recreation of the east for a single person - his mother.
As the world hurtled into the 1990s, unknown to many on the red side of the world, communism was close to its end. When the wall fell in Berlin, it set in motion a quite breathtakingly quick reunification process and that does not always take everyone with it... A few days before the change of the world, the main character's mother, Christiane (played by Katrin Saß) has a heart attack and falls into a coma. She does wake but, eight months later, there have been some major changes and the shock of that could be enough to spark another heart attack. Alex decides that she, although bedridden, should be brought home so that she does not discover the change and so recreates the very recent past in a single room. Once the setup is complete, it is a fairly simple romp through until the eventual discovery. It is fairly predictable but, at the same time, is so charmingly put together that you don't step out of the film and worry about predicting it. There are some other elements to the film but it is essentially all through that prism of unification.
I've not seen a huge number of German films so I was not always sure how the whole thing would work out, and whether there is a different narrative style to take in, I don't know if this is particularly typical either. There is an element of darkness in some of the humour but I'd say it was a fairly straightforward comedy. The premise is quite enjoyable and also quite interesting as it shows how quickly the change was made to happen for the people in the East with a huge cultural shift[3]. Within a few months, the cityscape was so different that it was a large project to hide it from her - and I think the film really made me sit and wonder about that change. An amazing upheaval and it shows that it was not all good for the inhabitants. After 40 years within a given system, many in the East really lost out and the little vignettes of the older people wistfully thinking of the past are quite touching. There are some scenes where Alex persuades some other people (with capitalist cash, of course) to play along with his mother and they come and sing socialist songs for her and join in the party. Another friend goes to the trouble of mocking up news broadcasts to explain random Coca-Cola signs that have been spotted.
Apart from being a good film in its own right, there are also some great touches and nods to the differences between East and West Berlin that I found satisfying. If you think that aspect of it would be enjoyable, I can definitely recommend it but even without that, it is still a pleasant way to spend a few hours of your life.
1. This means words that are made up of others, my favourite is the cross-cultural word karaoke which means empty (kara - also used in karate) orchestra (oke) which is now an English word though it is from Japanese. The reason I like it is because "oke" is directly from the English word orchestra so it is a loan word returned back, with interest, to form the portmanteau.↩
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