Islamabad :Want to know the limits the siblings can go to protect and bring comforts to their ailing mother? Go watch ‘Goodbye Lenin’!
Screened at the Auditorium of the Embassy of the Federal Republic of Germany Wednesday evening, the film, ‘Goodbye Lenin’ kept the small audience glued to their seats as the events and incidents rolled on the screen.
Shot in the year 2003 in the back ground of reunification of Germany after the fall of Berlin Wall in 1989, the movie is about a mother with a son and daughter living in East side of the Berlin Wall (East Germany).
The mother, Christiane (played by Kathrin Sass) is a staunch believer of socialist ideology and also is a member of the Party, whose husband has gone to the West (Germany). She is living with her son Alex Kerner (Daniel Bruhl) and daughter Ariane (Maria Simon).
There are rallies for reunification of Germany taking place on both sides of the wall in which the protestors on the west side were free to raise their voice but on the east side the state was busy doing its best to curb those rallies, using brutal force.
And one day it was in one of those revolutionary rallies against the communist regime that Christiane saw her son, Alex, raising slogans and watches the police beating up her son before throwing him in a truck and taken away to a prison. And she collapsed right in front of Alex’s eyes on the road and falls in coma.
She remained in coma, confined to a bed in the hospital for eight months during which the world outside has changed. The Berlin Wall has been torn down and Germany has reunified. Both son (Alex) and daughter (Ariane) are trying to spend as much time by the side of their ailing mother. And then one day the mother came out of coma, with no hint that the history has changed outside.
The doctor was persistent to keep her in hospital but son was determined to take her home, where he believed his mother would be more comfortable. The doctor warn Alex (son) that though his mother has come out of coma but she is still fragile and any ‘jarring event could trigger a heart attack’.
Realizing that the event there is no more a communist government and that the Germany has reunified would be too much for his mother to come to terms with and might cause a shock that may prove fatal, Alex builds a world of deception, making his mother, confined to a bed at home, believe that everything was the same as those were before she fell in coma.
And the efforts Alex and his sister Ariane, with the help of a friend of Alex made to keep mother believing she was still living in East Germany, were a never ending series of events and incidents, which some time even created soft ripples of laughter and might have brought smiles to the faces of those in the audience.
Creating fake video tapes to show as current affairs and news on the TV, bringing people, adults as well as children, posing as Socialists to celebrate her birthday like in the old days, collecting old tins, bottles and what not to keep his mother believe she was still living in socialist regime as a party member!
It was a beautiful movie with a powerful script, written by Bernd Lichtenberg and Achim von Borries, and directed by Wolfgang Becker. But it was performance of the son and the mother that at times brought tears to the eyes, or laughter and smiles to the faces of audience.
Dr. Philipp Deichmann, the Deputy Head of the Mission, welcomed the guests at screening and read out a brief introduction about the movie, which was in German language with English subtitle. At the end of screening, Dr Deichmann thanked the audience and extended invitation for yet another movie the next evening!