2024-12-13 17:12:00
“Goodbye, Lenin!” with Daniel Brühl and Katrin Sass made him famous. Now director Wolfgang Becker has died after a serious illness.
Berlin.
His breakthrough comedy “Good Bye, Lenin!” attracted millions to the cinema – now director Wolfgang Becker has died at the age of 70. In his most successful film, the young Daniel Brühl was seen as Alexander who maintains the GDR for a while longer on behalf of his mother. Mother Christiane Kerner (Katrin Sass) fell into a coma in October 1989 and slept despite the upheavals: her son wants to spare her.
The tragicomedy was screened in competition at the Berlinale, became the most successful German film of the year in 2003 with over six million viewers and received numerous awards, including nine Lolas at the German Film Award, six European Film Awards, a César, a Goya and a Golden Globe nomination.
Becker died on Thursday after a serious illness, but still unexpectedly, as the Just Publicity agency announced. “He leaves behind his wife Susanne and daughter Rike.” The family requests privacy. Culture Minister Claudia Roth (Greens) said: “His death is a painful loss for German cinema. With his films he will remain unforgotten.”
Sauerländer creates oriental comedies
Becker was born in Sauerland (in Hemer, Westphalia), studied in Berlin – from 1974 to 1979 at the Free University of Berlin and from 1981 at the German Academy of Film and Television Berlin (dffb).
With his debut “Butterflies” (1988) he won the Golden Leopard at the Locarno Film Festival. The acclaimed Berlin “crime scene” entitled “Blutwurstwalzer” (1991) was followed a year later by the film “Kinderspiele”, a tragicomedy about the working-class environment of the 1960s.
Becker founded the production company “X Films” with Tom Tykwer (“Lola Run”), Dani Levy (“All About Sugar!”) and Stefan Arndt. In addition to his work as an author and director, he taught at the dffb, the Baden-Württemberg Film Academy and the Cologne Academy of Media Arts (KHM).
Becker once made the tragicomedy “Life is a Construction Site” (1997) with Jürgen Vogel. The artistic-economic satire “Me and Kaminski” (2015) based on the novel by Daniel Kehlmann – again with Daniel Brühl as the actor – was once again about deception.
“Wind of history through a small prefabricated apartment”
Due to the fall of the Berlin Wall, the comedy “Goodbye Lenin!” Becker likes to say that he was often asked in interviews whether he was from the East or the West. “You could have Googled it.” In conversations about “Goodbye, Lenin!” He was often asked where he was on the day the Berlin Wall fell and whether he considered himself the inventor of Ostalgie.
During “Goodbye, Lenin!” he wanted to let the winds of history blow through a small prefab apartment, Becker says. Contemporary history in the background, a family in the foreground. And there’s a lie hanging over everything.
Later, the term “Ostalgie” arose through television shows, Becker says. He finds it “not at all appropriate” in the context of his film. The term, for example, implies a reduction of the topic to banal and beloved things and to moments of everyday life that are mourned, such as certain foods or rituals. “When Alex makes his mother believe that the GDR will still exist, I obviously play with these things and these moments,” Becker says.
But if one accuses the film of having a “rosy, ostalgian view of the GDR” and of being a subsequent idealization or romanticization of an unjust regime, “then I can only say: you haven’t really seen the film.” Ostalgie had a different meaning anyway for citizens of the former GDR. “It wasn’t about regretting the old GDR, but about defending one’s life achievements and one’s past.”
“I’m generally not the fastest person”
Becker often went several years between his film projects. “I’m generally not the fastest person,” he says of himself. He wants to make films that are as good as possible. He doesn’t live in the luxury of simply receiving good scripts, but must be involved in every script.
He believes, Becker said five years ago, that socialization between East and West still makes a difference. But this no longer applies to young people as much as to parents.
But Becker also has a nice anecdote to share about Germany’s vision of the post-reunification period. Before “Goodbye, Lenin!” When it was released in cinemas in February 2003, there was a test screening in Munich. “I secretly sat during the screening, right in the middle of the audience, completely unacknowledged.” Ideal for getting first reactions.
All viewers received a questionnaire. “There was a young couple sitting next to me and the girl said to her friend, ‘It says here: are you from the West or the East?’ What should I write there? I come from the south.” (dpa)
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