"Goodbye Lenin" is ....

the best German movie you've never heard of. Actually, Amazon says it's one of the best--period--that you've never heard of.

Watched it last night in the home theater, and I was really captured.

Starts out goofy funny, then gets surreal, then gets very painful and ends very poignantly.

In short, I laughed, I cried, it changed my life.

I am partial to anything Scottish, Irish or German, but this movie especially so, since I had done my PhD diss on the DDR (learning German to do so) and had read decades of East German foreign policy literature.

Still, even with no background whatsoever, this is an amazing and entertaining movie.

Comments

[BWJones]

Agreed. Goodbye Lenin is a triumph of filmmaking and it has achieved a place in the pantheon of my top ten films ever.

[Michael]

I love the bit where they get the fake news to claim that it turns out socialists invented Coke. It's brilliantly surreal.

[LC]

Besides "Goodbye Lenin", "The Lives of Others" is also a fantastic film about DDR and Stasi.Another film that nobody has ever heard of is "Luo Ye Gui Gen (Going Home)" from China. Describes lives and conditions in China with humor and heart.

[desiree fox]

Love, love, loved it! I saw it several years ago. Have not come across too many people who have seen it.