hey folks, Harry here... I really like the sound of this movie. I mean a whole bunch. What a wonderful premise, feel safe to read ahead, the spoilers do not come. And it looks like it'll have a limited distribution in the United States, unless the reason Warner Brothers picked it up was to remake it, in which case ROOOOWWWRRRR!!!! Hehehhe, Here ya go...
Harry!
We met very briefly at your booksigning in London! Anyhow, here's my review of a film I hadn't spotted any reference to on AICN (although a search has subsequently revealed a report on it from a fortnight ago). Still, here's my tuppen'orth, which I wrote for the Film Forum at www.notbbc.com....
Just got back from a short trip to Germany, during which I managed to squeeze in a visit to the cinema to see the current sleeper hit "Goodbye, Lenin!", (suddenly playing to packed houses thanks to a combination of winning the Best European Film prize at the Berlin film festival and picking up a nice distribution deal from Warner Bros).
Films like this just make me descend into a gibbering stream of superlatives, so all I'm going to do is recommend very very strongly that you all get along to see it as soon as a subtitled version appears over here.
The gist of the film is this: German Democratic Republic, 1989. A hardcore Socialist single mother falls into a coma shortly before the German reunification. She wakes up after the end of the cold war -- however the doctors advise her teenage son and daughter that any sudden shock will most likely send her aggravate her fragile condition. So the children set about tricking their bedridden mum into thinking that Communism is still alive and well, hugely elaborately and with great comic effect. It's a brilliant premise, with scope for humour, pathos and political commentary, all of which it addresses very entertainingly. Daniel Bruehl, playing the lead, has a big future ahead of him -- he has a lot of the mischievous charisma of the young Malcolm MacDowell.
Speaking of MacDowell, there's a fun Clockwork Orange reference, as well as many other spiffing movie references throughout, including a wedding video by an aspiring filmmaker which features a slow-motion shot of the bouqet being thrown into the air and then cutting to the wedding cake, and a glorious, *glorious* tribute to La Dolce Vita which I won't spoil for you (but which will no doubt be spoiled for you by the trailers, because that's what trailers seem to be for nowadays).
Tying the whole thing together is Yann Tiersen's swirling, spiralling score, by turns circumspect piano and strings and farcical trumpet and woodwind -- I picked up the CD over there (and it's raising the hairs on my neck as I write this).
Martin
