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It is that sinking
feeling when the real world around seems to betray in every respect. The sky
above comes down heavily with roaring thunder and the earth shakes beneath the
feet. The windows through which ray of hope enliven closes one after another.
Almost overnight all the pillars of ideals and dreams collapse, and one is find
being a captive in an isolated island of gloom and despair, surrounded by a
hostile sea - threatening in roaring arrogance to overflow the last frontiers of
resistance. It may not be an easy task to fight back, since the possibility of
any help from the world outside is none, not in the beginning at least! There
are, indeed, distant and scattered islands where the flag of resistance still
flies high with great pride and determination. It certainly takes some time to
see through the darkness of confusion, and to reach the comrades sailing across
the turbulent sea. The initial phase of lone battle is the toughest, since one
has to dig out optimism from within oneself. And then, to protect that tiny lamp
of hope from a treacherous wind.
Such is the situation
in several parts of the world today, following a temporary setback of revolution
in many countries. The reactionary forces of global capitalism are baring fangs
and claws in a jubilant mood since the fall of the so-called socialist regime in
eastern Europe. Those who do not want to yield to the forces of global
capitalism and imperialism, but cannot find an immediate way to join the
mass-struggle against these monsters, are desperately trying to keep the dream
of equality, freedom and peace alive, nonetheless in their hearts! To reject and
retaliate temptation and pressure from outside, it is necessary for them to take
refuge in a dream-world, to create and nurture it as a parallel reality,
stronger and truer than the world that exists in the space-time of immediate
vicinity.
Utopian as it may be
in the beginning, soon it becomes a unique source of inspiration and moral
strength. Like a luminous star - millions of light-years away, yet brighter than
anything compared on the earth, it guides the lone sojourner on the long and
difficult path of individual struggle till he reaches the forefront of
mass-struggle against capitalism. Its bright rays pierce through dark mist and
clouds to bring the assurance that the revolution will emerge out of the ashes
of yesterday’s failure like a nascent Phoenix. And as one advances along this
path of battle, the dream-world appears to be more and more real and within ones
reach.
It’s not a mere
coincidence that the urge of keeping the dream of socialism alive has found very
similar expression in the contemporary cultural media in Germany and West Bengal
almost simultaneously. In spite of the vast geographical distance and difference
in the social, political and cultural history, there is one thing common for
people of the present generation of the erstwhile east Germany (D.D.R.) and West
Bengal; namely the disillusion about a regime that had proclaimed itself as
socialist but in reality has sabotaged the revolution.
While in D.D.R., the
regime formally threw away symbols of socialism and openly merged the state with
the capitalist western part in the name of the grand re-unification, the
left-front Government of West Bengal still calls itself communist and performs
rituals like uttering hollow promises of revolution. However, it has since long
proved itself to be a trusted protector of the class-interest of the bourgeois
by openly joining hands with the national and global forces of capitalism,
adopting pro-rich economic policies, and finally by unleashing a reign of terror
against all those who want to take sides with the oppressed people. This regime
in West Bengal has been sharply criticized and the quest for a revolutionary
alternative has been given voice by a contemporary play "Winkle Twinkle" written
by Bratya Basu and directed by Debesh Chattopadhyay. This is already so much
discussed and debated here that it does not perhaps need any introduction to the
readers. Just to remind one, the play depicts the struggle of Sabyasachi Sen, an
ex-revolutionary who reappears after having vanished into the thin air 26 years
ago while trying to escape from the police, to cope with a world far different
from what he had dreamt of and to search for a way to revive the spirit of
revolution. The play ends with a strong message of optimism when Sabyasachi wins
over his son Indra, who had initially joined a right-wing political party out of
his frustration and disillusion about the so-called leftist parties. In a
dramatic and symbolic scene, the two generations unite for a struggle against
capitalism.
It is remarkable but
not surprising that a film with very similar political message but in a
completely different spatio-temporal perspective, has occupied the cultural
centrestage of Europe in recent years. "Goodbye Lenin", directed by Wolfgang
Becker based on the story by Bernd Lichtenberg, narrates the extraordinary
personal struggle of Alex, a young man from D.D.R., against the changes brought
by the Fall of the Berlin Wall and its aftermath. The mother of Alex, who was a
devoted follower of communist ideals, went into coma following a severe
heart-attack resulting from the shock she had received to see her son being
arrested by the police from a protest-march against the ‘socialist’ regime. By
the time she recovered from the state of coma, the Berlin Wall and D.D.R. had
ceased to exist. The similarity between the long coma of Alex’s mother and the
supernatural hibernation of Sabyasachi of "Winkle Twinkle", both in a sense
symbolizing a long phase of political confusion and inaction, cannot be
overlooked...however, the analogy cannot be stretched too far since unlike
Sabyasachi who had to face the new and alien reality himself, Alex’s mother is
protected by her son, who is determined not to let her know about the changes.
The doctor warned that the feeble heart of the mother could not stand any more
shock, and thus Alex wages a lone battle to prevent the outside world from
encroaching into her mother’s 79 square meter room, where the old D.D.R. needs
to be re-created and restored. Thus the making of the dream-world
begins...however, even though initially it was out of his personal emotion for
his mother, gradually he identifies himself with the ideal socialist world that
her mother dreamt of. This dream could not touch him earlier, when he had seen
only the deteriorated form of a ‘socialist’ state which had already been taken
over by the reactionary forces. In such a suffocating and oppressive regime, he
could not identify himself with his mother’s optimism and her ideals of
socialism, and naturally fell prey to the capitalist propaganda that a better
and happier world was waiting for them on the other side of the Wall. However,
now he faces the stark reality of a capitalist state, where the uncertainty of
life haunts him and his sister every moment, where he finds his sister brutally
beaten up by the boss at the place of work for slightest absent-mindedness,
where the rich marginalizes the poor in every sphere of life. In a symbolic
scene, when he tries to console and comfort his sister, he identifies the new,
united Germany with a fat, greedy customer at the Burger-King (the workplace of
his sister) munching french fries with his ugly and ferocious teeth, symbolizing
the super-rich bourgeois depriving the poor of all the means of subsistence and
survival.
Thus, Alex is getting
disillusioned about the capitalist system, and the belief that an alternative
can be found only in an ideal form of socialism as his mother had thought of is
growing stronger within him. As he carries on with the material restoration of
D.D.R. in his mother’s room, which ranges from replacing the labels of bottles
and cans of packaged food and other things having new brand-names by the old
ones to using a projector and old video-cassettes obtained from the archives of
the national TV-channel of D.D.R. to "telecast" news for his mother, Alex also
discovers the dream of socialism for himself day by day, bit by bit, and falls
in the love of it. This dream is identified with the life of his mother, as if
the need for keeping this dream alive is synonymous with her survival.
We cannot go into too
many details, but mention must be made of a few significant scenes. The windows
of the room of Alex’s mother are kept shut on the pretext of doctor’s advice but
actually to hide from her the changes in the surroundings of the house. One day
she requests to open the shutters for a while, and the first thing catching her
sight is a hoarding of Coca-Cola, a taboo in the socialist D.D.R. In order to
pacify her, Alex has to fabricate an "evening news", shot with a friend’s help,
reporting that the rights of Coca-cola was reverted to D.D.R. following the
revelation that the secret formula had actually been discovered in D.D.R. and
thus an intellectual property of the socialist country. Then comes a day when
the mother comes out to the street on her own to be confronted by a stunning
scene: The big statue of Lenin is being shifted elsewhere by a helicopter! She
almost collapses to the ground, just when Alex and his sister come to her
rescue. In the evening, Alex invents an explanation for the incident,
interpreting it as part of a conspiracy against the socialist regime which could
be foiled. The film is indeed full of many such episodes for which Alex is
supplying explanations suitable for her mother through his "domestic
channel"...it is not only for the mother but also for himself, as his increasing
emotional attachment with the imaginary world he’s creating becomes more and
more clear as the film progresses. This really reaches its height when he adds
commentary to the scenes of the Fall of the Wall to make the mother believe that
the western part has merged with the D.D.R. to form a united socialist Germany.
This is something she had wished throughout her life, and now it is also the
dream of her son, a dream that he knows not achievable in a near future, perhaps
not even in his lifetime...yet he is convinced that this must come some day.
Following his mother’s request, he searches for their father who had fled to the
west long back, and finds him out. The film then ends in a symbolic and
emotional scene where the re-united family, also including Alex’s girlfriend,
his sister’s husband and child, watches the extravagant celebration of the first
anniversary of the re-unification of Germany... to the mother, however, it is
the celebration of the triumph of socialism over the capitalist west. The others
in the room, while being fully aware of the reality, are identifying themselves,
though in varied degrees, with the dream-world of the mother. For Alex, the
jubilation outside the room seems as illusive and short-lived as a mirage, and
his optimistic vision as if propels through the dark sky of the night cutting a
fiery path, like the rockets shot by the people on streets, to reach far beyond
today’s world of despair and failure, to usher the new world which he can feel
with all his senses, and for which he is determined to struggle.
As the author
Lichtenberg puts it in an interview :
"Der real
existierende Sozialismus ist nicht aufgegangen, aber der Gedanke lebt weiter.
Das ist vielleicht naiv, aber auch sehr stark." (The socialism has not yet come
in reality, but the thought lives on. It may be just too naive, but at the same
time very strong indeed.)
This strong optimism
is the bridge that connects Alex and his mother with Sabyasachi and Indra of
"Winkle Twinkle", and which will eventually bring all those fighting for the
fulfillment of the dream of socialism to a common battlefield where the final
and fatal blow can be inflicted on capitalism.
For further
information about "Goodbye Lenin": see the website www.good-bye-lenin.de
Some of the awards
received by the film:
Blue Angel Award
for Best European Film Berlin 2003, 8 German Film Awards 2003, German
Screenplay Award 2003, FIPRESCI Award Belgrade 2003, Premi
Internazionali Flaiano for Best Foreign Language Film & Best New Talent
Pescara 2003, Special Jury Prize & Youth Award Valladolid 2003, 6
European Film Awards 2003, Goya 2003 for Best Foreign Film,
Best Non-American Film from the Danish Film Critics’ Society 2004, César
for Best European Film 2004
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