GOOD BYE, LENIN!

For once, some comedy based on the War.

By JASON ANDERSON

A charming tragicomedy about a young man's tireless efforts to spare his ailing mother some unfortunate news about the Berlin Wall, Good Bye, Lenin! was more than a hit movie when released in its native Germany last year. Instead, it snowballed into a cultural phenomenon. Germany's reunification was popularly perceived as a triumph of vibrant Western capitalism over feeble Eastern socialism. But the psychological impact on the former citizens of the German Democratic Republic went largely overlooked. These people were expected to forget 40 years of dogma overnight and do so with a Coke and a smile. As director Wolfgang Becker says, "Just imagine your life changing completely from one day to the next and nobody asks if it is okay for you."

Alex (Daniel Brühl) and Ariane (Maria Simon) live with their mother, Christiane (Katrin Sass), in East Berlin. Single since her husband defected a decade before, Christiane is a passionate socialist who ardently believes in the GDR's promises of equality. A heart attack puts Christiane in a coma days before the Wall comes down. As she sleeps for eight months, her kids adapt to the new economy: Alex begins selling satellite dishes while Ariane trades in her drab lifestyle for a Burger King uniform and a West Berliner boyfriend. Though her children are relieved when Christiane wakes up, the doctor tells them that a sudden shock could provoke another heart attack. Alex essentially recreates the GDR for his mother, going so far as to create fake news broadcasts that continue to trumpet capitalism's imminent collapse.

Good Bye, Lenin!'s often hilarious but essentially melancholy tale of a family getting trampled by the march of history struck a chord with German viewers and commentators, most of whom are just beginning to get some perspective on the shotgun wedding that occurred between the two Germanys 14 years ago. "For some reason, it became a big media thing in Germany," says Becker in an interview at the Toronto International Film Festival in September. "There was a big wave of what they called 'Ostalgia' -- the word is a combination of nostalgia and 'Ost,' which means east. Every television station now has a retro show about the GDR and things like this."

A veteran television and film director who co-founded Berlin's X-Filme production company with Tom Tykwer, Becker is understandably pleased that Good Bye, Lenin! has been so successful in countries where it has not sparked social debates. It won six awards at the European Film Awards and has outgrossed Tykwer's Run Lola Run to become the most internationally successful German film ever. Healthy per-screen averages in the first weeks of its US release suggest that Good Bye, Lenin!'s success will be repeated over here.

With a sparkling score by Yann Tiersen (Amélie) and a careful balance of whimsy and pathos, Becker's film is very engaging. Though lightweight as a political satire, Good Bye, Lenin! manages the tricky task of generating sympathy for the citizens while ridiculing the state. "The people who had to live in the GDR are something completely different than the system of the GDR," says Becker. "I think it was right that the GDR broke down because it was a perversion of the socialist ideal. For the word 'democratic' to be in GDR was just ridiculous. They took it seriously in the beginning but forgot it very fast. But people like Christiane always remembered the good intentions and were hoping the politics would come back. And the government kept telling people, 'Socialism is the superior system, even if you can't see that right now. Just wait another 10 years.' It's like the Catholic church saying, 'It's very bad on Earth but if you come to Heaven, everything will improve... as long as you do what we say.'"

What Good Bye, Lenin! mocks is not Christiane's faith but the system that demanded it. Alex's well-intentioned but absurd conspiracy to dupe his mother reveals how deeply he was influenced by that system as well. An equal-opportunity satirist, Becker -- a West German native who has lived in Berlin since 1974 -- also pokes fun at the inane consumerism of his half of the country.

Nevertheless, the director insists that his film "is not a matter of systems. It's just that there were a lot of interesting, intelligent people and good characters living in the GDR. And they have a right to have their positive memories, even if these memories come from a country and a time of dictatorship. It's not good to tell people they lived their lives in vain only because they had the bad luck to live under the wrong circumstances."