Analysis of comedy in Good Bye Lenin movie - Essay Example

Her coma lasts eight months. During this time, the Berlin Wall comes down and the process of westernization advances. When Christiane regains consciousness, her doctors tell Alex that another shock could kill her. Alex decides that the dissolution of the GDR would finish his bedridden socialist mother so he recreates the former East Germany in her apartment. As Alex, now a satellite salesman, and his friend Denis stock the apartment with East German products (old containers filled with edible western comestibles) and former GDR-issue furniture, Christiane is cosseted by familiar things.

The young men make elaborate videotapes with false news and even procure a Trabant. Elvis Mitchell writes in his film review: “Our Trabant is here!” Alex announces, informing her of the arrival of the legendary Eastern European auto so shoddy in manufacture it could have had a wood-burning engine. “And after only three years waiting,” Christiane responds, glee adding a tremble to her voice.”(New York Times 27 Feb 2004) Simulated reality and false identity are a staple of literature, theater, film and television.

One example of false identity used for comic effect is found in the motion picture, Some Like It Hot. In this 1959 film, the characters played by Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis had no access to modern technology, but made do with quick wardrobe changes and an excellent, witty script. In the late 1970s, Three’s Company (an American television show based on an earlier British version) also used false identity and simulated reality to advance the plot and themes of the weekly segment. In Three‘s Company, Jack Tripper is determined to maintain the fiction that he is a homosexual in order to remain in an apartment with two female roommates.

The landlord is the only one who does not know that Jack is pretending; Jack’s friends and roommates perpetuate the ruse. The