defilmtv1-9, Exercise 2: Two ways of remembering the East

Model answer:

Good Bye, Lenin! is a comedy with a serious edge about nostalgia: a son recreates East Germany in a flat to protect his mother, who has woken from a coma after the Wall has fallen. It shows how much of the old life people missed, and leaves out most of the state's repression.

The Lives of Others is a darker drama, set in 1984, about a Stasi officer assigned to monitor a writer. It shows the surveillance state and its effect on people. It leaves out the ordinary, non-political side of life in the East, and historians have pointed out that its central change of heart is more a drama than a documented type of event (check).

Between them they show the range of ways East German life was remembered after the Wall fell.