Good bye, Lenin!

Good bye, Lenin! (2003)

7 corrected entries

(1 vote)

Corrected entry: Alex's sister gets a coke bottle from the fridge and drops it when she tries to open it. She obviously drops it deliberately. (01:11:10)

NancyFelix

Correction: She drops it deliberately because her nose was bleeding.

Corrected entry: At the beginning of the film, where Alex is still a kid and drawing a spaceship, he's drawing it with his right hand. Later in the film, where he's an adult, you can see, when he writes down the times of the shifts of Lara the nurse in the hospital, he's left handed. (00:20:50)

Correction: There might be another explanation. In East Germany it wasn't allowed to use your left hand for writing is school. We were forced to write with the right hand. Later on - rules got loose. Just like myself I started using my left hand for writing as well. That might explain a hidden hint (East-West) in the movie.

Corrected entry: After the father had gone to the west he had been writing to his family for three years but never got a response because the mother intercepted all the letters. It remains a mystery how she had been able to do that since he had been writing to their home address - the mother has a full-time job and comes home in the evening. The kids come home after school. Of course they would check the letterbox, at least from time to time. Given the load of letters the father had written the odds are too high they would have come across one of them.

NancyFelix

Correction: Pretty simple, actually - she could have been the only one with a key to the mailbox.

Corrected entry: In the film, some people are watching the World Cup semifinal match between Germany and England. Outside, it's daylight. On the TV screen, it's night. Since the scene takes place in Germany and Italy (where the World Cup took place) are in the same time zone, it's not possible to have day in one place and night in the other.

Correction: This is possible. In summer it gets dark earlier in the south of the time zone than in the north. In north of Norway (where I'm from) its midnight sun in this time zone during summer. I guess the Berlin area will stay "day" an hour or two more than Italy during the World Cup.

Corrected entry: When the family are driving to the Datscha, Alex is in the back seat of the Trabant, and his blindfolded mother next to the driver in the front. First out of the car is Alex, to help his mother. However the driver and the mother are still blocking the only 2 doors of the car, which begs the quesion: how did Alex get out? (01:26:20)

Correction: He just came out a little bit earlier to open the gate and then helped her mother to leave the car again. She just did it twice - once outside the fence without Alex's help and then inside.

Corrected entry: Despite what the film portrays, it was not completely impossible to exchange East German marks for West German ones after the July 1990 deadline. Having a mother in a coma would undoubtedly have been an acceptable reason to exchange money a few days or weeks later.

Correction: Even though this is probably true, it is still more than possible that the petty bureaucrat that Alex is dealing with is just trying to exert his small amount of power. We don't see Alex or his sister ask anyone else for advice on the matter.

STP

Corrected entry: In the scene where Alex and his friend are cutting films together, you can see, that the friend of Alex has got a T-shirt on with the matrix code on it. The film is set in 1990 and The Matrix was made in 1999.

Correction: I thought so too, but I took a closer look and it isn't a Matrix shirt. It just looks very, very, very much like the Matrix code.

Factual error: Alex's mother lies eight weeks in coma. After she wakes up she remains bedridden for weeks (we don't know for how many but that doesn't really matter), first in hospital, then at home. When she sneaks out of bed for the very first time and walks out of the house she does so without any major signs of dizziness - anybody who has spent a few days flat on his back in hospital knows about the difficulties to get vertical again. The problem is not only a mechanical one like weak or stiff legs, something a physiotherapist could help with, but mainly the fact that the heart would not be able to build up enough pressure to supply the brain with sufficient blood. It's absolutely impossible that Christine would be able to get up the way she does after eight weeks not only in bed but in a coma.

NancyFelix

More mistakes in Good bye, Lenin!

Sigmund Jähn: Socialism doesn't mean live behind a Wall. Socialism means reach the others and live with the others.

More quotes from Good bye, Lenin!

Question: After Alex finds his father and is driving back home, we see a scene from the hospital, where Lara (or another nurse?) is talking to Alex's mother and telling her that the Berlin Wall collapsed, and that Germany is united. But later, Alex's mother acts like she's unaware of this, and Alex himself also states that she never knew the truth. Why?

Answer: Lara did indeed tell Alex's mother the truth. Realizing how much her son had done for her, she left him with the illusion that she never found out. The audience knows better.

Ioreth

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