Goodbye, Lenin

, , , and I went to see “Good bye, Lenin” at the Embarcadero Theater the other night. It’s a fun movie, that tells the tale of a young man (Daniel Brühl) whose mother (Katrin Saß) falls into an eight-month long coma immediately before the fall of the Berlin Wall. She had been an ardent socialist, and when she awoke, her son was advised by the doctor that any severe shock could give her another heart attack, one that she may not survive. So, like any dutiful son, he plots to keep the news of German unification from her. It had several laugh out loud moment, and a touching ending.

The movie tries to make the point that sometimes it is necessary to lie for the sake of another, and without this central conceit, the movie would not have been possible. Of course it would have been quite possible for the woman to have been gently reintroduced into the new reality, but what else is going on here is that the filmmaker, Wolfgang Becker, is also asking on the other side, what price does one have to pay for the telling of that lie, even if for a good reason. The price the movie’s hero pays is pretty small, in terms of emotional turmoil and loss. His mother does die happy in the knowledge of German reunification, but belieiving in the victory of the GDR, that the corrupt West finally collapsed, and that the GDR had to take in the refugees.

Is that what love and compassion are really about? Keeping the truth from someone to spare them the real world? Shouldn’t we be helping other people shoulder their burdens to the extent we are able?

Well, I’ve got a massage client in 45 minutes, so I guess I’ll be shouldering some burdens for a little while.

Tagged as: Life in San Francisco