Goodbye Lenin (2003): History in the subjunctive
2006; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 10; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1080/13642520600648558
ISSN1470-1154
Autores Tópico(s)Eastern European Communism and Reforms
ResumoAbstract Wolfgang Becker's film Goodbye Lenin (2003) has been popular far beyond Germany. It provokes questions not found in standard debates about film and history. Feature films and documentary representations frequently 'adjust' history, governed by criteria of narrative economy and audience expectations that are quite different from those of historians. A counter-current within the discipline has pleaded for acknowledging the capacity of film to represent different aspects of history, and potentially to explore dimensions which are beyond written history. In Becker's film, an East Berlin mother suffers amnesia at the historical moment of the fall of the Wall, and during the transition process to German unification. Her son's response is to stage-manage a transfigured version of the past, thereby creating a time warp between her consciousness and the post-Wall 'reality' beyond her walls. The historical reflection that emerges relates to history as it might have been, but wasn't: history, in short, in the subjunctive mood. Set in an East German context, the issues raised by this film look very different from contemporary debates about Germany's right/ability to mourn her own dead, the meaning today of Dresden, etc. Approaching history in the subjunctive mood might well open out the discipline of history itself. The film's treatment emerges as not just defensible, but as signally apt for subject matter as surreal as the demise of the German Democratic Republic (GDR). Keywords: FilmHistoryCounterfactualsGerman Unification Acknowledgement For insightful suggestions the author is grateful to editor Robert Rosenstone, and to two anonymous readers' reports. Notes [1] It is impossible to watch sections of Reitz's Heimat 3 without mental comparison with Goodbye Lenin, e.g. the statue of Lenin careering through the countryside, or Gunnar clearing out a jar of Eastern brand name peas in his former home. [2] See Rentschler (2000 Rentschler, E. 2000. "'From new German cinema to post-wall cinema of consensus'". In Cinema and Nation, Edited by: Hjort, M. and Mackenzie, S. 260–277. London: Routledge. [Google Scholar], pp. 260 – 277). [3] A signature slogan in the former GDR: 'socialism as it exists in fact'. [4] In the context of grammar, 'mood' refers to a way of viewing reality, transmitted to the verb form. Hence the indicative mood is used in statements of fact, the imperative to issue a command, the subjunctive to express wishes or hypotheses. With subordination to the State discredited, and the dominant cold war paradigm inadequate to explain the unification phase of German history, the subjunctive (compounded by its use in German with the conditional mood, conveying a lack of certainty) would seem the appropriate way to approach this history. [5] Žižek (2005 Žižek, S. 2005. 'The two totalitarianisms'. London Review of Books, 27(no. 6) 17 March 2005 Available at: http://www.lrb.co.uk/v27/n06/zize01.html(accessed 5 September 2005) [Google Scholar]). [6] Böhn (2005 Böhn, A. 2005. "'Memory, musealization and alternative history in Michael Kleeberg's novel Ein Garten im Norden and Wolfgang Becker's film Good Bye, Lenin!'". In Memory Traces: 1989 and the Question of German Cultural Identity, Edited by: Arnold-de Simine, S. 245–260. Oxford: Lang. [Google Scholar], p. 256) cites an article that appeared shortly after the release of Goodbye Lenin. Questioned about their identity, 74% of citizens in the 'neuen Bundesländer' felt they were East Germans to a reasonable or even a strong degree ('ziemlich' oder 'stark'), while this figure actually rose to 80% in 2001. The article is Staud, T. (2003) 'Ossis sind Türken. 13 Jahre Einheit: In Gesamt-Westdeutschland sind die Ostdeutschen Einwanderer', Die Zeit, vol. 41, 1 October, p. 9. [7] With Western television off limits for Eastern viewers, though of course far from being out of range for TV reception, GDR schoolchildren could unwittingly betray their parents' viewing patterns when answering questions about the previous night's Sandman program. [8] See Rosenstone 2001 Rosenstone, R. 2001. "'The historical film: looking at the past in a postliterate age'". In The Historical Film: History and Memory in Media, Edited by: Landy, M. 50–66. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press. [Google Scholar], p. 63. Referring to Mississippi Burning (Alan Parker, 1988), he concludes: 'the film engages in "false" invention and must be judged as bad history'. [9] Andrea Dworkin (1997) 'The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum: Is Memory Male?' in A.D., Life and Death, Free Press, New York, pp. 240 – 250. [10] In 1989, Olaf Thom transferred from the GDR to Bundesliga team Bayer Leverkusen and was subsequently selected for the 1990 World Cup team. For this information, my thanks to colleague Gaby Schmidt. [11] With the broadcast of the 1954 World Cup final, in which Germany beat the highly favored Hungary, an East Bloc rival to boot. See Hillman (1995 Hillman, R. 1995. "'Narrative, sound, and film: Fassbinder's The Marriage of Maria Braun'". In Fields of Vision: Essays in Film Studies, Visual Anthropology, and Photography, Edited by: Devereaux, L. and Hillman, R. 181–195. Berkeley: University of California Press. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar], pp. 191 – 192). [12] For further representations of the couple divided by the Wall, see Christa Wolf's novella Der geteilte Himmel/Divided Heaven (1963 Wolf, Christa. 1963. Der geteilte Himmel, Halleßaale: Mitteldeutscher Verlag. [Google Scholar]) and Margarete von Trotta's film Das Versprechen/The Promise (1995). [13] Just as Turkish director Kutlug Ataman plays on expectations, by denying them, in locating Frau von Seeckt in her Wannsee villa in his film Lola and Billy the Kid (1999). [14] Cf. the view of film history as 'a history of collective wishes and repressed desires' (Kaes 1995 Kaes, A. 1995. 'German cultural history and the study of film: ten theses and a postscript'. New German Critique, 65(Spring/Summer): 47–58. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar], p. 55).
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