History Film / GoodbyeLenin

* TheGreatPoliticsMessUp: An in-universe example, given Christiane doesn't realise the Wall fell and Alex has to try and pretend nothing much has changed.

** If the cab driver really ''is'' supposed to be Sigmund Jähn, is this. In real life, Jähn had managed to work as a freelance consultant for the German Aerospace Center (DLR) following reunification in 1990, prior to which he was in the East German army where he had risen to the rank of Major General, hardly making him likely to be as down on his luck as the movie suggests.
** A Soviet nurse or medical student was very unlikely to be found in East Berlin, since the Soviet Union was extremely restrictive about its citizens leaving the country even for short-term tourist trips and even for friendly socialist nations. And neither East Germany was a Third World country in need of foreign professionals, nor the Soviet Union felt any necessity to send its students for training abroad. Definitely, there were Soviet medics working in GDR, but they were affiliated with the Soviet military or diplomatic missions and treated mainly other Soviet citizens. Although emigration from the USSR had become more within the realm of possibility by 1989 due to Perestroika, it's also hard to imagine someone using this newly found opportunity to go to GDR, which remained a much more dogmatic and repressive communist regime than the Soviet Union under Gorbachev.
** Residents of most of the GDR's territory could actually watch Western television with no consequences, so it's unlikely that East Berliners would be that uninformed about various vices of the capitalist society. Regions at the extreme northeast and southeast of GDR where Western broadcasts were not accessible due to their remoteness from the West were referred to as ''the Valley of the Clueless'' within GDR itself. Surprisingly, there were more recorded dissatisfaction with the regime in these areas, perhaps because their residents could discard all the negative information about the West fed to them by the government as propaganda.

* ExcitedShowTitle

* TheGreatPoliticsMessUp: An in-universe example, given Christiane doesn't realise the Wall fell and Alex has to go and try and pretend nothing much has changed.

** '''Alex:''' Inverted. For someone who claims to be doing the right thing he comes across as a jerkass about it, and may even be totally misguided.
** '''Ariane:''' As far as she's concerned, she's trying her best to build a new life along with her boyfriend and to do the best for her daughter; and has a point when she's frustrated with Alex's scheme, given how totally unrealistic it proves and how [[spoiler: it's actually the painful memories of separation and how they were treated by the regime that kills their mother in the end, not its surprise downfall- she might have been better off in hospital.]]
** '''Rainer:''' Despite his portrayal (from Alex's viewpoint) as an entitled, unconcerned Wessi, like Ariane his life has basically been turned upside down by Alex's schemes, seems quite fair in protesting things like the fact he's been paying the rent, genuinely has no reason given his upbringing to see why the East Germans around him are constantly complaining, and does his best to play along and do the "right thing".
** '''The new doctor:''' It's not his fault that his predecessor moved to the West, and is only giving his professional opinion, [[spoiler: which by the end would seem to be right.]]
** '''The bank employees:''' It's not the clerk's fault that he can't exchange the family's life savings- he doesn't make the rules, and doesn't personally deserve the harassment from angry East Germans.. Likewise, the security guards who throw Alex out are only doing their jobs.

** Then there also is the over-arching theme of the GDR's ''entire population'' having been locked out of the loop, and now have understandable trouble adjusting to it.

** Any time Alex notices a sign of West Germany within proximity of his mother's bedroom. The first is when their neighbor is watching ARD's ''Tagesschau'', to which Christiane wonders why he is watching West German television. And then there's the Coca-Cola banner.

** Residents of most of the GDR's territory could actually watch Western television with no consequences, so it's unlikely that East Berliners would be that uninformed about various vices of the capitalist society. Regions at the extreme northeast and southeast of GDR where Western broadcasts were not accessible due to their remoteness from the West were referred to as ''the Valley of the Clueless'' within GDR itself. Surprisingly, there were more recorded dissatisfaction with the regime in these areas.

** A Soviet nurse or medical student was very unlikely to be found in East Berlin, since the Soviet Union was extremely restrictive about its citizens leaving the country even for short-term tourist trips and even for friendly socialist nations. And East Germany was not a Third World country in need of foreign professionals. Definitely, there were Soviet medics working in GDR, but they were affiliated with the Soviet military or diplomatic missions and treated mainly other Soviet citizens. Although emigration from the USSR had become more within the realm of possibility by 1989 due to Perestroika, it's also hard to imagine someone using this newly found opportunity to go to GDR, which remained a much more dogmatic and repressive communist regime than the Soviet Union under Gorbachev.

** A Soviet nurse or medical student was very unlikely to be found in East Berlin even in 1989, since the Soviet Union was extremely restrictive about its citizens leaving the country even for short-term tourist trips and even for friendly socialist nations. And East Germany was not a Third World country in need of foreign professionals. Definitely, there were Soviet medics working in GDR, but they were affiliated with the Soviet military or diplomatic missions and treated mainly other Soviet citizens.

** A Soviet nurse or medical student was very unlikely to be found in East Berlin even in 1989, since the Soviet Union was extremely restrictive about its citizens leaving the country even for short-term tourist trips and even for friendly socialist nations. And East Germany was not a Third World country in need of foreign professionals. Definitely, there were Soviet medics working in GDR, but they were affiliated with the Soviet military of diplomatic missions and treated mainly other Soviet citizens.

** Residents of most of the GDR's territory could actually watch Western television with no consequences, so it's unlikely that East Berliners would be so clueless about Western entertainment.

* ArtisticLicenseHistory: If the cab driver really ''is'' supposed to be Sigmund Jähn, is this. In real life, Jähn had managed to work as a freelance consultant for the German Aerospace Center (DLR) following reunification in 1990, prior to which he was in the East German army where he had risen to the rank of Major General, hardly making him likely to be as down on his luck as the movie suggests.

Shortly before the fall of the Berlin wall, the young East German Alexander Kerner's dedicated Communist mother, Christiane, sees her son in an anti-government demonstration and falls into a coma due to a heart attack. When she awakens eight months later, the doctors tell Alexander that his mother cannot abide a new shock. Alexander therefore orchestrates an elaborate ruse, complete with fake television programs, to keep his bed-ridden mother from finding out that the GDR is gone.

* UsefulNotes/{{Dacha}}: The family have one[[note]]referred to by the German word ''Datsche'' and helpfully translated in the English subtitles as "weekend cabin" [[/note]], and are shown holidaying there in old home movie footage- later, they take the mother (Christiane) there in the Trabant, where she [[spoiler: tells the real story about the father's defection to the West, and suffers a relapse due to the trauma of remembering the event.]]

** Any time Alex notices a sign of West Germany within proximity of his mother's bedroom. The first is when their neighbor is watching ARD's Tagesschau, to which Christiane wonders why he is watching West German television. And then there's the Coca-Cola banner.

* PopculturalOsmosisFailure - Denis shows Alex the wedding video he has edited in the style of ''Film/TwoThousandOneASpaceOdyssey''. Alex does not get the reference - having never seen the original film. Later, when the Kerners, Lara, and Rainer are driving through the countryside, they start singing a song in Russian which they all know, but which Rainer (a westerner) doesn't.

** Alex comes upon some bewildered Northern Vietnamese men dressed in white tank tops. Starting from the 1950s, East Germany and North Vietnam, both communists, started an exchange program for Vietnamese students to receive education and training overseas. The white tank tops are stereotypical clothing worn at home for Vietnamese men of that age group.

* ShownTheirWork: The filmmakers did one hell of a job in getting the props correct for the fake-out East Germany.

* BurgerFool: Being a single mother and her economics degree having been rendered useless by the fall of Communism, Ariane is forced to take a job at Burger King in order to make ends meet.

** At one point, Denis says "[[Film/Apollo13 Houston, we have a problem.]]" While the Apollo 13 mission did take place twenty years earlier, the phrase was not popularized until the film ''Apollo 13'' was released in 1995.[[note]]In fact, the actual phrase that Jim Lovell used when the accident occurred was "Houston, ''we've had'' a problem." The phrase in the movie is actually a misquote.[[/note]]

* DisappearedDad: [[spoiler: Subverted.]] At the beginning of the film it is explained that Alex's father abandoned his family when he was a child and fled to UsefulNotes/WestGermany [[YourCheatingHeart with his western mistress]]. [[spoiler: However, this turns out as a lie that his mother told him. His father wanted to flee with his family and it was Alex's mother who decided to stay at the last moment.]]

Shortly before the fall of the Berlin wall, the young East German Alexander Kerner (Creator/DanielBruhl)'s dedicated Communist mother, Christiane, sees her son in an anti-government demonstration and falls into a coma due to a heart attack. When she awakens eight months later, the doctors tell Alexander that his mother cannot abide a new shock. Alexander therefore orchestrates an elaborate ruse, complete with fake television programs, to keep his bed-ridden mother from finding out that the GDR is gone.

''Good Bye, Lenin!'' is a German [[{{Dramedy}} bittersweet comedy]] from 2003, directed by Wolfgang Becker. Has a lot of subtle humor, playing on the feeling of shell-shock many East Germans felt upon being catapulted into the Capitalist world and the almost overnight disappearance of their country. Many of the visual clues might be easy to miss for people not familiar with the common cliches about the GDR. The film also put actor Creator/DanielBruhl on the map.

* ADegreeInUseless: Ariane's[[note]]Alex's sister[[/note]] studying of "economic theory" (presumably of a Marxist-Leninist sort) is something she clearly saw as useless in a now-capitalist environment- so she quits whilst she's ahead and gets a job at the very capitalist Burger King.

* ImagineSpot: After Adriane says that she saw their father, Alex imagines him as a morbidly obese man living in a mansion with a pool.
* InTheOriginalKlingon: One of the fake newscasts claims that proof has been discovered to demonstrate that Coca-Cola was invented in East Germany. Even Christiane isn't completely fooled as she thought it existed before the war.

* InTheOriginalKlingon: One of the fake newscasts claims that proof has been discovered to demonstrate that Coca-Cola was invented in East Germany.

* SpottingTheThread: While watching the Coca-Cola "news broadcast," Christiane is surprised when Denis states that the soda is an East German invention. Even she knows it existed well before the war.

* YouAreTooLate: [[spoiler:After Alex and Ariane finally find their family's life-savings, totally 30,000 Ostmark, the bank teller informs them that they are past the deadline and are unable to exchange them for West German Marks. Not only that, but the bank wouldn't have accepted cash anyway]].

[[quoteright:298:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/goodbye_lenin_6320.jpg]]

* AnachronismStew: At one point, Denis says "[[Film/Apollo13 Houston, we have a problem.]]" While the Apollo 13 mission did take place twenty years earlier, the phrase was not popularized until the film ''Apollo 13'' was released in 1995.[[note]]In fact, the actual phrase that Jim Lovell used when the accident occurred was "Houston, ''we've had'' a problem." The phrase in the movie is actually a misquote.[[/note]]