white lies & communism ain't always evil

I just watched Goodbye! Lenin directed by Wolfgang Becker and am posting this for Arex to read because apart from the lead character having the same name as him, i somehow feel it would relate to him in more ways than one.

Happening just 16 years ago, to protect his fragile mother from a fatal shock after a long coma, Alexander Kerner, a young German man, keeps her from learning the truth that her beloved nation of East Germany as she knew it has disappeared. I've always loved foreign films (partly for their arthouse feel and partly for getting a kick out of hearing the foreign language being uttered in such large amounts) and this is another excellent one. I'm rating it 7.8/10. In Germany, it's also known as 79 qm DDR. The runtime of 121 min makes it fit nicely into slightly more than 2 hours of couch-potato bliss and occasional toilet breaks.

I'm amazed at how the lead Alexander makes his own version of television news using random archive footage and how he pieces everything together to make it the non-existent GDR believable for his bedridden mother. He must be a superbly resourceful Political Science student!

Similarity Spot 1: When Christiane (the mother in the film) goes out from her GDR home into the real world, a yellow and blue ad for IKEA is visible. Alex and his mum lives just a few kilometres away from IKEA at Alexandra Road!

It really was a sublimely sophisticated film that educated me about the East Berlin wall and the political background of German history. Oh, perhaps Karen's beau Moritz could further educate me sometime! The contrast of personal re-unification (the children and their father) versus that of the east and west is a wonderfully treated theme throughout.

Now, if anyone can tell me what is the significance of space 'astronauts' and 'cosmonauts' in the film, and also happens to be as suave as the main lead below,

i'll spend a night with you to watch the stars!