NACHDENKEN UEBER CHRISTA W

[sandor_baci]

The GUARDIAN has published an obituary of Christa Wolf.  It is scooped in great chunks out of Wikipedia, and fails to address an important aspect of her work.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/dec/01/christa-wolf

My response will not be published there, so I

Comments

[uneasytruce]

Juicy the film Das Leben der Anderen?

or the even better film Good Bye, Lenin! ?

I'd no idea you were interested in these things (and by 'these things' I mean the GDR and its history, with personalities). Had to do some East German reading myself for Germanistik, lots of meaty neologistic vocab. Speaking of meaty:

Juicy The Tunnel with gorgeous Heino Ferch?

[sandor_baci]

Never THE TUNNEL. The other two... yes, DAS LEBEN DER ANDEREN, earnest, moral, too didactic for me: Pro bono, contra malum, eh? Join hands, sing Kumbayah! And everyone leaves the theatre feeling cast down at how bad the bad is and uplifted at how good one oneself is.

GOOD BYE LENIN!, being a comedy, enabled sympathy with der roten Trottelin of a mother (one likes the laughable, the pitiable, because one is superior to them) and hence with the view that she held, made the audience find their own relationship with the society described, enforced upon them not a point of view but a duty to think. From ambivalence, art.

Was that what you meant by "even better" or am I over-analysing again?

[uneasytruce]

Please realize that--compared to yours--my operating system is tremendously simple. So my initial thought, the litmus test, is: I enjoyed Lenin more than Others.

People on this side of the Atlantic shudder when they witness what a police state Great Britain has become. But the few of us who went to the theater and watched Others sang no kumbaya; for my part it was bleak and forbidding because it reminded me that the USA is a police state as well--just not the high-tech CCTV universe that is the UK. Instead, the tactics in North America are much closer to those employed by the STASI. And still are. What you found didactic was for me merely explanatory. And, unfortunately, illuminating. It was beautifully filmed, dark and interesting. True to the milieu and period. It was hard to watch even once, and I could never see it again.

Lenin, on the other hand, I have watched well over one hundred times in its entirety. I know every line of its dialogue. I didn't see it as a comedy; for me, it was a heroic tragedy, and I

[sandor_baci]

Good friend, thank you. I shall see GOOD BYE LENIN! again as soon as possible, and through your eyes.