Greetings again international cinema fans! And tonight or today's, depending on when you're watching this, international films special is Good Bye Lenin! Goodbye, as in Vladimir Lenin. Aka a goodbye to the old soviet ways. Okay so what's this film about what's going on? It is a crowd-pleasing little tragic comedy, a historical drama The film itself was released in 2003 but because it's actually set in 1989-1990 it's it's kind of a historical little comedy-drama piece. So its age is of no significance, it's holding up very well. And I should tell you there's a 90 to 95 percent student approval rating on this film. Everybody generally loves this one. Good Bye Lenin!, 2003 release, directed by Wolfgang Becker, could you get a more german name than that? It should tip you off, to where this is set Germany It is rated R for a brief language and sexuality situations. It's pretty tame, you'll be fine, nothing too offensive here. It does run 121 minutes For those of you that can't make the conversion that's just over two whole hours. Ah! Two hours of watching a foreign film where I have to read subtitles? Yes, but as I suggested, people love this film. You're gonna love it, it's great. . The film is out of Germany. It stars German stars, it's in the German language. And a little piece of action that I generally love with films: it's actually filmed on location. So everywhere that they tell you they are, they actually are. Okay, where are they? The film takes place not just in Germany the country, but specifically in Alexanderplatz, aka Alex, the locals just called Alex, which is a kind of a large public square neighborhood transport hub right in the central Mitte district right in the center of Berlin, the great capital city of Germany itself. And Berlin is a great world city in its own right. Alexanderplatz is kind of a neighborhood with some great monumental soviet era architecture and big monuments and stuff. The Mitte district is kind of the most central borough of Berlin, this big city. Like all big world cities like New York or LA or Tokyo, there's different sections or boroughs or neighborhoods whatever you want to call it and Mitte is kind of the bigger centralized sections of Berlin proper. Does that makes sense? Wherever they say they are they kind of are. It's filmed on location and it is kind of cool. Let's get to what's going on in the film. Here are some background facts and historical settings to help you appreciate and understand the action a little bit more It makes it more funny too. The film opens there's a little piece of the opening when of the main characters a little kid and that is supposed to be in 1978. Do pay attention to the opening credits. Even as the credits are rolling they're showing you some real pictures of Alexanderplatz and East Germany and some other cool things These are real pictures, they're really kind of cool. So it opens just at the very beginning credits in 1978. They actually referenced the first German to enter space that the kids are watching on TV. And that's a true fact, Sigmund Jahn came from East Germany, the GDR, we'll get to that in a second, where this film is set, in east Berlin in East Germany, Okay, that may be tricky altogether for you from the start. So 1978 is when it starts first German entered space, Sigmund Jahn, they're watching it on TV, it's real footage of the TV. I point that on in particular because the historical references is made in this film, they're all real. So it's fictionalized characters and it's a fictionalized plot that's carrying on the action of the film, but when they reference historical events or meetings or political happenings or astronauts, German astronauts, all of that stuff is historically accurate and real. It's really a kind of a spot on historical piece in terms of what they're referencing in the real world But that's just where the movie starts in 1978 or the opening credits start. It kind of jumps forward and the bulk of the film is set in East Berlin which at the time was a part of the GDR, the German Democratic Republic, which was in essence a Soviet puppet state And the time frame is October 1989 until just after the reunification of Germany, just about a year later. So you're looking at about October 1989 to about October 1990. About exactly here's what this film is going to depict. A whole lot is going to change in that one year which is why this is a really nice little piece of historical drama film. So official German Unity Day, that is when their east Germany and West Germany became a singular Germany that's been in existence since probably you were born, that official German Unity Day is October 3rd, 1990. Now again you've only known a singular Germany since you've been alive so you may be already saying, "Wait wait wait, what professor dude? East Germany? East Berlin, West Berlin, West Germany, German unification? So East Germany is a Soviet puppet?" "What?" Okay. I don't make assumptions anymore because I'm getting old, so things that I live through that I accept as facts that everybody knows, we can't really assume that anymore. So I'll bet that a lot of you know this, but I'm not going to assume, so let me give you a thumbnail sketch of World War Two so that you understand the situation that these characters find themselves in in 1989 East Berlin. And that is How did there get to be an East Germany and a West Germany, much less an East Berlin and a West Berlin? It all goes back to World War Two. Remember, if you never learned this, the Nazi Germans were the bad guys in World War Two that we're trying to take over all of Europe and possibly all of the world. Who knows what Hitler in that wacky bunch had in mind, but what's important for this film is that all of the Allied Powers, that is a whole bunch of countries that allied together to fight against Nazi domination of Europe, were all fighting together and closing in on the Nazis, and closing in on the end of the war in 1945. Oh, who are the allies? Well obviously the good guys, over here Team West, led by the United States. But you had the UK and France, in the Benelux countries and really everybody else in Europe, except the Italians. The Italians are always off doing their own thing and they were kind of on the Nazi side, but that's a different story. So the allied powers were the US, UK, France, et al. other European powers, AND and the Soviet Union. This is a very important fact of world history that's often just kind of glossed over in US history textbooks. We really don't teach this to American citizens and that's probably because we had this whole thing called the Cold War for many decades where we hated the Soviet Union. So we just conveniently omit the facts that the Soviet Union was our ally in world war two fighting against the Nazis. Okay, now I can summarize quickly. As the Nazis start losing the war because the Russians are attacking from the east, the other Allied Powers are attacking from the west, we all start beating Nazi butt and we all kind of meet, bam, right in the center of Europe. The Allied Powers meet Everybody high fives. We've liberated Europe and specifically we have met in the middle of Germany where the Soviets have liberated and kicked all the Nazis butts on the east side, and we have liberated and kicked all the Nazi butts on the west side. [claps] We meet in the center of Germany, in the center of Europe and in the center of Germany and all is well that ends well. Hitler dies, and World War Two is over and everybody's happy, yay happily ever after, that's the end of story. Not really because where we, the Allied Powers, met in World War Two is precisely where the Iron Curtain falls shortly thereafter. That happens because the United States and its other western allies never really trusted the Soviets that much and honestly the Soviets never really trusted Team West that much. So even though they collaborated together to take out the Nazis during World War Two, as soon as that was over mistrust cropped right back up again. Remember, these are two sides that are kind of ideologically opposed to each other. The democratic capitalist on one side and the soviet Soviets on the other side. The Iron Curtain falls and on the western side of that Iron Curtain are the "free", democratic, pro-capitalist states, and on the east side are the the Marxist, Leninist economic types who are really under the Soviet umbrella/the Soviet yoke, whichever way you want to look at it. So when we look at eastern Europe back in the day all the way up to 1989 you see "countries" like Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and yes, even east Germany was considered its own country. These were supposedly sovereign states but honestly they were really controlled by The Soviet Union, so we called them kind of Soviet puppet states Really Moscow, that is Russia, was always the power player in the Soviet Union, and so Russia was really calling the shots in all of these states across Eastern Europe. And thus we have the start of the Cold War. Let's bring it back to this movie though. What's all that cold war stuff in an Iron Curtain got to do with some folks hanging out in East Berlin in 1989? Well we have to point out this other kind of geographic anomaly with the Iron Curtain business Meaning that although we can draw this nice Iron Curtain in the middle of Europe and say, "Yeah the Soviets were all on one side and Team West was on the other", the anomaly was actually Berlin. Hey, we're back to the city that is the setting for this movie. Berlin, long the capital of Germany, the central political power seat of Nazi Germany and still kind of this political center of Germany, even after World War Two. It's a very important city. It's a city that at the time was located in East Germany, behind the Iron Curtain on the Soviet side. But it was itself a divided city. It's symbolic of Europe as a whole, but Berlin itself was a divided city Meaning, that because it was the seat of Nazi power, when the US and France and the UK and the Russians and even the the Dutch, I think, and the Belgians, when all of these powers came in to mop up all the rest of the Nazis, Everybody met in Berlin. It's the political seat of the country. And just like Germany itself was divided into zones of occupation, so the US occupied this part of Germany, the French took this part, and the Belgians took that part, and the Soviets took that part, we did the same thing with Berlin itself. Even though Berlin was located in the Soviet sector, it's a Soviet occupied sector of Germany, because it's the political seat, all of the Allied Powers had sections of Berlin that they controlled. So the Soviets took the east side of Berlin and the US, the UK, and the Frenchiestook the other side. I'm gonna go ahead and fast forward. Eventually the US ends up--it just becomes a collaborative Team West effort--so we'll just say that western Berlin was western-controlled, eastern Berlin was soviet controlled. Does that makes sense? Again this is in 1945 at the conclusion of the war but by 1946, 1947, 1948, the Iron Curtain is falling, the ideological differences are pulling the former allies apart, there's "we" on this side who don't like "them" on that side, and vice versa, The Soviets, for their part, were slowly kind of taking over the governments of Hungary and Poland and Czechoslovakia and they were trying to do the same thing in Germany. There was a general mistrust of Germany a lot of people didn't want to see it reunified and the Soviets' angle was, "Well we want to keep it weak. We want to keep Germany just kind of slightly off-center. We don't want them to be reunified and we don't want them to be a singular whole and if they do become a singular whole again, we want to make sure that they're kind of a puppet of us." So that was the Soviet interest and by the way that makes total sense given they just fought a horrific war with Nazi Germany over the course of five years and lost 20 or 30 million people So it makes sense. I always empathize. So the Soviets had their mission in mind of kind of occupying all of Germany and keeping it in their sphere of influence. Team West of course wanted the reverse. They're like, "No, we want Germany to be a pro-capitalist democracy like us over here and maybe even join NATO and be in our club." Now that all again crystallizes, Germany itself gets split in half and there's West Germany and East Germany Berlin was also an occupied city by everybody. So Berlin, even though on the Soviet side, became a East Berlin and a West Berlin. This really comes to a head very early on in April of 1948 because that's when Soviet Leader, Joseph Stalin, says, "Okay, well we're gonna try to push the western influence out of West Berlin because we want to control all that. Eventually we want to control all of Germany period." So they said, "Hey, people in West Berlin, Allied forces in West Berlin, you need to leave and we're going to have a blockade. So we're surrounding West Berlin with Soviet troops and we're not going to allow railroads or trucks to come into West Berlin anymore." And that's how all the West Berlin population had been receiving their food and clothes and water and daily goods.It was being supplied by Team West So the Soviet blockade was called the Berlin blockade Actually lasted from April 1, 1948 to May 12, 1949. This became the first kind of major international crisis of the Cold War because Team West was like, "Oh crap what do we do? Do we just, fold and let all our allies in West Berlin just be absorbed by the Soviet Union?" And the US basically stepped up and said, "No, we're not gonna do that. we're gonna have something called the Berlin Airlift." This is a cool-ass thing that Team West did, mostly led by the US of course, where they said, "Okay the Soviets are blocking off all land lines to West Berlin. Fine. We'll fly plane after plane non-stop with food, water, medication, clothes, everything. They did that for like a year, non-stop... The airlift--it was planes almost like trucks going down an interstate. Just planes one after the other flying from West Germany over to West Berlin and back and dropping off stuff and coming back repeatedly. Then that put the Soviets in a position of, "Oh well are we gonna start shooting planes out of the sky to stop the allied powers from doing this?" Remember the time line here is 1948-1949. Everybody's just getting over World War Two. Nobody wanted to start World War Three, The Soviets included. So everybody's like, "Argh!" So eventually the blockade was lifted. Stalin and the Soviets said, "Fine, whatever. You can have West Berlin we guess, but we still control East Berlin and we're gonna do everything we can to make life uncomfortable for your presence in West Berlin." So that Berlin Crisis of 1948-1949 served to highlight the competing ideologies and economic visions for Berlin, but that symbolized Europe as a whole and both sides of the Iron Curtain as a whole. Competing ideological and economic visions. I'm telling you this in detail because that's what the film is about and you're going to see all of this happen. And you're gonna see the changes on both sides of the curtain in Berlin as this unravels. When the Soviets fail to force Team West out of West Berlin, they created the Berlin Wall. Which they said, "Fine, okay. You can stay, but we're gonna create this huge barrier, concrete barrier, all around Berlin to isolate West Berlin off from the rest of the world really but certainly from the rest of its western allies over in West Germany." This wall was referred to as the Anti-Fascist Protection Rampart I'll say that again. The Anti-Fascist Protection Rampart, that's what it was named by the GDR. It was called the Wall of Shame by those in West Berlin The Soviets looked at this as if all these fascists over in Team West, they're trying to get Germany to join NATO, this military alliance, they're trying to do all this stuff against us so they're fascists so we need to build this anti-fascist wall to protect our East Berlin and East German citizens from this little enclave of western Fascists. It's bizarre. It was called the Wall of Shame by those of West Berlin 'cause they're like, "Oh my gosh this is just pathetic because we're all Germans!" They're all Germans on both sides of Berlin and they're all Germans on both sides of Germany but they were split up because of this Cold War stuff and that my friends is why Berlin itself is so important. It's always been important as a political seat of Germany. It certainly was important during World War Two as the seat of political power and it becomes symbolically, hugely important for this whole ideological divide of Europe throughout the entire Cold War. That's why it's a great setting for this film. So let's get back to it and do it shall we? You probably know a little bit about the rest of this Cold War business where the story will end By 1988, 1989 the USSR, that is the Soviet Union, is going broke They're morally and politically bankrupt as well, the ideology has not worked, the economics have not worked, and they start to kind of release their political hold on those eastern European states, their economic political stranglehold that they had on them. By 1989 a whole series of political changes occurred across the Eastern Bloc which was what this whole area was called, the Eastern Bloc, where the Soviets basically were just running out of money to prop up the system and they just said, "Okay, well you guys can start doing what you want to do." So there's a liberalization of power and the eastern bloc's authoritarian systems and the Soviet government said, "Okay Poland and Hungary and Czechoslovakia, if you guys want to go your own way that's fine we guess you guys can vote on it. We don't we just don't have the resources to keep this up." And after Poland and Hungary particularly started having protests and people saying, "Good we want to vote to be out of this system all together. We want out of the Soviet Yoke. We want out of here." Once that started to hit the streets even in East Germany, which again even on this old map East Germany was kind of a different state from West Germany. Civil unrest started to occur in East Germany where people said, "Hey we don't want to be part of the Soviet system either and maybe, we want to be free to go over to West Germany or even West Berlin." And lots of public protests started to occur by the 9th of November 1989, the East German government the GDR government basically said, "You know what? We give up too. If the Soviets are giving up then we're going to give up too. And hey, citizens of East Berlin, if you want to go to West Berlin, we don't care. We're not gonna patrol the Berlin Wall anymore." Because not only was it a big concrete bunker of a wall but it had armed guards and barbed wire and stuff So by November 9, 1989 the East German government said, "Fine. If you guys want to go over there that's fine. If you want to go to West Germany that's fine too. Basically, we don't care anymore." And people started to cross the border and it was a big party and we're like, "Yay! We're all gonna be Germans again!" I already referenced this once. German Unity Day happens by October 3, 1990 where everybody's like, "Yes we're voting ourselves back to a singular state." That my friends is the background and the the setting, the on location setting of what you're about to see so let's go, see this now. As you watch this film, pay attention to these details. Just enjoy the film. It's a great little looking kind of comedy drama Watch out for these things though Check out the changing political systems during this era of transition. During this one year where everything changes in Germany. East Germany and West Germany, East Berlin and west Berlin. So check out the changing political systems. How things morph over the course of one year. Check out the changing economic systems during this transition year. Pay attention to detail of the lifestyles in Soviet-dominated East Germany before the transition. Then be sure to pay attention to the changes in lifestyle as East Germany and East Berlin become Westernized during this transition. Pay attention to lots of other things too, but that's kind of the big picture thing and do keep in mind that what happened in Berlin became so critically important because Berlin has always been the symbol of this ideological struggle across Europe as a whole. So what happened in Berlin became the focus of world attention because that's eventually what happens to all of Europe in a post-Soviet world. That make sense? It all started there in 1988, 1989, 1990, as this film is unfolding. Cool? Alright enjoy the film from 2003 Good Bye Lenin! 121 minutes. We'll see you after the film for a quick summary. Party on.