Film Response - Goodbye Lenin

Goodbye Lenin, internationally released in 2003, I found to be quite an unusual fim based on its narative. It has been labeled as a Tragic comedy which is quite an odd combination to have in a film. Tragedy and comedy. Sort of like an oximoron of the film world.

When the mother (Christiane) is shown at the very beginning of the movie, with the rest of the family including the father, the family are all shown as being happy and loving the life they have together. Then the mother is taken ill and it shows a complete contrast showing that the mothers life has fallen apart due to the fact the the father left the family. Gradually the mothers condition grows worse and she has two heart attacks.

When the son (Alex) hears that his mother must not receive any bad or exiting news he almost seems to go into overdrive and becomes really protective of her. I find this a bit ironic in the way that one what he is doing to her is wrong in the sense that assuming she did survive, she would eventually have to know that the whole world outside her room has changed. which could lead to another heart attack on quite possibly a bigger scale.

There was a breif moment in the film that i didnt really understand, one was when you saw through the window Alex's girlfriend talking with the mother explaining that germany's east and west side was now one. Personally i got the impression that maybe the girlfriend got sck of leading this double life and just decided it was in the mothers best interests to tell her about what was happening, But then we see the father and Alex explaining not to say anything about what was going on. I got slightly confused but it didn't seem to effect the narative, so i wasn't put off at all.

Other then a few minor comic points in the film, i didn't really see how the movie could be perceived as a comedy. Maybe it could have been due to the fact that we were learning the movie rather then just watching it because none o0f us were really aware of the facts that were shown in the movie. A Point that was brought up in a discussion.