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Good bye, lenin! movie analysis
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Good Bye Lenin! is the coming of age story of a young man as he struggles with his own psychological and moral growth while trying to protect his ill mother from the shock of learning that the Berlin wall has fallen. The movie was released in 2003, but is set from October 1989 to roughly a year later highlighting the time period just before the fall of the wall and the social, political, and economic changes that happened in Germany as a result of unification. Good Bye Lenin! is set in East Berlin, and was filmed mainly at the Karl-Marx-Allee in Eastern Berlin, and in an apartment building near Alexanderplatz. The film’s subject matter is portrayed through the juxtaposition of dramatic and sad moments against moments of comedy and satire which makes the genre classification of ‘tragicomedy’ the most appropriate. The story of Good Bye Lenin! focuses on the life and growth of a young man, Alex (played by Daniel Brühl) as he, his girlfriend Lara (Chulpan Khamatova), and his sister Ariane (Maria Simon) attempt to shield their mother (Katrin Saß) from learning that the East German state has dissolved. It is in this context that Alex must come to terms not only with his mother’s failing health, but also with his own identity in a rapidly changing space. In order to protect his mother Alex re-creates the GDR for her, but his portrayal does not exactly depict the ideals of the former socialist state. Instead, this ‘new’ GDR reflects Alex’s own personal beliefs and opinions of how he wants the state to be. Therefore, the parallel universe Alex creates in Good Bye Lenin! is an idealized representation of East Germany created in order to protect himself from the tragedy of losing his mother and to help him come to terms with a new world orde...
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...ex seeks the comfort of a timeless present by idealizing the socialist state of his childhood, which in his mind will prolong the inevitability of his mother’s death. In the end of the film Alex’s final goodbye is both a tribute to his mother and to his country. He creates one final broadcast that ‘describes German unification as a collective show of support for socialism rather than capitalism’ (Doughty, 38). Alex realizes that the GDR he created for his mother is the one he wished to have. Through this realization Alex is able to let go of the space he has created for himself to protect his identity because he understands that letting for of this state and moving forward does not mean he has to forget everything in his past. He now understands that he can maintain a link to his personal past, and his mother, but is still able to move forward in a unified Germany.
In conclusion it is seen that Alex has effectively changed into a man and has become a morally sensitive individual. He, for himself has chosen good
Alexie was grew up in the Indian culture but unlike Sa he willingly leaves. Alexie specifically showcases the changes in his life throughout the structure of his text; through the idea of education. He wanted a chance to have more opportunities then what was given to him on the Indian Reservation. The structure of Alexies piece was specific and purposeful due to the fact that it truncated his life into years; the years of education. The audience is aware of the thematic shift in the seventh year when he “...kissed the white girl”(Alexie). The shift between his time on the reservation and his resilience through taking matters into his own hands despite the backlash he received through growing up. Alexie knew that he didn’t want to leave his culture willingly behind but it was something that he had to do in order to change his life and take charge of it like an “Indian” would
The continuation of the violent anti-Jewish riots that had plagued the Russian Empire in post-Revolutionary Russia forced the response of prominent communist party leaders. Both Vladimir Lenin, leader of the Bolshevik party and head of the Soviet state, and Leon Trotsky, leader of the Bolshevik army, formulated responses that attempted to promote the ideas of communism through condemnation of the attacks. However, the content of these responses varies in a way that reflects both their differing backgrounds with communism, and reveals their distinct purposes in responding to anti-Jewish violence. A comparison of Lenin’s speech “On Anti-Jewish Pogroms” and Trotsky’s “A Word to the Ukrainian
Alex’s transition between roles in Forbidden City can serve as motivation for people to think that they, too, can change their ways and help others. In these manners, citizens respond to systems of oppression in Forbidden City. One way citizens respond to oppression is by acting as a bystander. For instance, when Xin Hua asks Alex to take the recordings of the student demonstrations out of the country, he refuses, saying, “What I wanted most was to get out of China, to leave the horror behind me.
He shifts from a static to dynamic character through the events at his house when the officers told him his uncle had died, at the junkyard, and at the bank. First, police showed up at Alex’s home to tell him that his uncle had died in a car crash. He knew he was about to receive bad news by “the way the police stood there” (Horowitz 2). Alex always knew his uncle to be a safe driver, so when the police officers stated that his uncle was not wearing a seatbelt, he became curious and questioned whether or not his uncle was really in an accident.
Hitler’s invasion of Russia Over the course of history, two major invasions of Russia have taken place and resulted in failure. Those two invasions ended in the failure of the invading parties. The first invasion by Napoleon Bonaparte will be mentioned briefly to provide additional information on Russian resources. The Second invasion, which took place during World War II, is the invasion pushed by Adolf Hitler. His invasion is a prime example of how Russia’s geography, lack of proper preparation, and underestimating the enemy, caused victory for Russia.
what to grow and how quick to grow it and how much to give to the
Burgess paints a future outlook of a land that is still committed to democracy, yet has already adapted radical methods facing youth criminality. There are several indications leading to the supposition that the general form of the government is a socialist one, e.g. the teenage slang called Nadsat which handles chiefly Russian vocabulary, streets named after personalities like Yuri Gagarin and paintings of nude working men in the style of Russian socialist art. So the state is on the say to become totalitarian, after the example of many communist countries.
The rise of the Bolsheviks was a huge campaign that used propaganda of the issues with the government at the time. There rival party or provisional government, which was more of a democratic system. The Bolsheviks used propaganda towards the provisional government to the people exploiting the reasons why there struggling as a country. The Soviets main leader Lenin was ready to take full control of the government by using military strength to over throw the provisional government. The Provisional government new the Bolsheviks were going to lead an uprising sooner or later. So a provisional military general Lavr Kornilov ordered troops to the Soviet stronghold of Petrograd to try to put down any uprisings. The Red’s defended the town and won respect from the population for standing for the revolution. They led an uprising that did not leave to much violence as the provisional didn’t really put up a fight. Then the rule of Bolsheviks began and a new era of Russian History. This did not come easy for the Soviets though, they struggled to stay in power and had a Civil War to handle. But ...
Lenin: Visionary or Extremist Vladimir Lenin was a leading member of the Bolshevik Party, as well as a major player in global events during and after the Russian Revolution. As a key player in the political arena during events leading up to and past World War I, Lenin’s rise to power is of unparalleled significance. He changed many things, both in Russia and across the globe. While many view him as a monstrous figure, there are still several results of his reign that can be seen as good, at least in the long run.
On the whole, does Goodbye, Lenin paint a positive or negative picture of life in communist East Germany? East Germany, its demise relayed through the mass media of recent history, has in popular consciousness been posited as negative, a corrupt bulwark of the last dying days of Communism in Eastern Europe, barren and silent. The other Germany to its West, its citizens free, was striding confidently ahead into the millennium. Recent cinema has sought to examine re-unification, with the Wolfgang Becker film Goodbye Lenin! (2003) a recent example of such an investigation into the past through cinema.
Identified within this study is the argument that whilst many of Lenin’s theories and practices were continued under Stalin, many were in fact developed and extended to new levels, possibly reflecting different motives: what Pipes refers to as Stalin’s ‘personality of excesses’. Although for many years, numerous historians including both members of the Western school of thought (such as Pipes), along with the official Soviet historians of the time believed that Stalin was the natural heir of Lenin, opinions have changed with time. As more evidence came out of Stalin’s mass atrocities, the Soviet historians soon began to see Stalin as the betrayer of the revolution as Trotsky had always maintained, and in an attempt to save Lenin’s reputation, they were also keen to point out how Lenin himself was unsure about
Communism has invariably influenced myriad intellectuals. Its ideas have dwindled for epochs. It sprouted controversy and confusion. Its promises to achieve a just and ordered society has gone into a romantic reverie. This means that it likes to generalize in broad, archetypal, if not stereotypical ideas aimed at class status, which seems that not applicable in pragmatic terms. It is a philosophy that holds many constituents that, although directly influenced by Marx's works, oppose each other, whether if it would be the "Stalinist" Right or the "Trotskyist" Left. It has a whole is an evolving ideology, in mathematical terms is a variable that necessarily is prone to constant augmentation. It is an obsolete theory in need of experimentation,
The Succession of Lenin After Lenin's death in 1924, there was a struggle between the leading. Bolsheviks to succeed Lenin as leader of the USSR? In the end, it is. emerged as a contest between Leon Trotsky and Joseph Stalin. There were several reasons why it was Stalin rather than Trotsky who succeeded Lenin, and it is these I shall be exploring in this essay.
Lenin's Contribution to Marxism up to 1905 and the Consequences Karl Marx was a German philosopher who wrote the Communist Manifesto, which encouraged workers to unite and seize power by revolution. His views became known as Marxism and influenced the thinking of socialists throughout Europe in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Marx believed that history was evolving in a series of stages towards a perfect state - Communism. These stages started with Feudalism - with the aristocrats controlling politics. Next would come Capitalism - with the bourgeoisie in control of politics.