Opens Fri March 19.
In 1989, Alexander Kerner (Daniel Brühl) is a young East Berliner not beginning, as he had hoped, a career in space, but one as a TV repairman. His younger sister, Ariane Kerner (Maria Simon), has an illegitimate baby, and their apartment, which they share with their mother, Christiane Kerner (Katrin Sass), is cramped. Though not happy about his situation, Alexander is not what one would describe as an angry youth, nor is he openly hostile to his mother, whose faith in the Socialist Party contradicts his emerging political beliefs.

During a protest against the state, which is brutally repressed by the police, Alexander's mother chances to see him being beaten and arrested by the very cops who serve the party that she is devoted to. The mother faints and has a heart attack, which sends her into a coma. During her long death sleep, the Berlin Wall falls, East Germany dissolves into West Germany, and the society changes its money, its clothes, its entire mode of material existence. After eight months, the mother awakes, but because she is frail, the doctor strongly recommends that her recovery not be shaken by shocks and surprises. She must be kept calm and relaxed at all times, otherwise she might have another and final heart attack.

It's at this point that Good Bye, Lenin! becomes interesting. Because of Christiane's exceptionally delicate condition, Alexander cannot inform her that East Germany is no more, that the party and the socialist ideals that consumed much of her adult life are now a thing of the past. To protect her nerves as the outside world becomes more and more like West Germany, the inside of Christiane's room is maintained in the state of East Germany. The trick, and it is a trick devised by the clever director (Wolfgang Becker), works. In other hands it would have been silly and exhausted in a matter of minutes, but Becker manages to get over an hour's worth of comedy and drama out of it. CHARLES MUDEDE

The Reckoning

dir. Paul McGuigan

Opens Fri March 19.
It is around 1380, the plague is everywhere, the French govern England, and if you are not a member of the ruling class then life is short and brutish. In the midst of this general state of things, a young priest named Nicholas (Paul Bettany) is caught sleeping with a married woman, and flees into the wilderness in fear for his life possessing only the clothes on his back and a knowledge of Latin in his head. In the first 10 minutes of The Reckoning, two fantasies are fulfilled. One, the fantasy of medieval sex, which we believe must have been fantastic because what other form of pleasure was to be had in that hard world of toil, disease, and death. To fuck a peasant girl or a shepherd boy was to fuck like there was nothing else but fucking itself. The other fantasy is less intoxicating; it is the fantasy of a condition that all intellectuals secretly or openly desire: to be reduced to having nothing else in this world but one's erudition. In this Gandhi state, their mind is imagined to be a pure organ; nothing stands between it and experience.

While wandering across the countryside, the priest chances to meet a group of traveling actors, who are led by Martin (Willem Dafoe). After overcoming resistance from several members of this troupe, the priest is invited to join them. Eventually, they all end up in a mountain town that has at its center a gloomy castle, in which an equally gloomy Frenchman (Vincent Cassel) lives and lords. There is also a murder case that involves a boy whose death is blamed on a witch. By means of a new play addressing this crime, the actors determine who the actual murderer is and help the town restore justice.

This story may as well have been made into a Hollywood-looking movie (like A Knight's Tale), as it is after all a murder mystery, but instead it is shot and edited in the terms of a documentary. Everything looks real: The forests are dark green and dank, the castle is harsh gray, and the townspeople all look like they're odiferous. The visuals are great but the story, in the end, is merely average. CHARLES MUDEDE

Au Hasard Balthazar

dir. Robert Bresson

Plays Fri-Thurs March 19-25 at the Varsity.
I very much recommend that you watch Au Hasard Balthazar for the simple fact that it is a masterpiece. Even if you, like me, don't care for Bresson's excessive Catholic symbolism, or his total contempt for the modern world--its music (jazz and rock), clothes (leather jackets), and technologies (loud radios, fast cars)--the art of his cinema is of the highest order. From the opening shot of Au Hasard Balthazar (the white hand of a girl embracing the black fur of a suckling donkey that is then adopted, baptized, and named Balthazar), to the last shot (the white sheep swarming around the dying donkey, which has been accidentally shot after a long life of hard work and cruel owners), the movie is structurally and visually perfect. Do not miss this film.

That said, let me now share with you this little donkey story, which I learned from a storyteller named Baba Jamal Koram and would make an excellent short film: One day a monkey was on a roof, dancing, jumping about, and making crazy noises. The owner of this house laughed and laughed at the monkey's antics. Later that day, a donkey, who had seen the monkey, climbed up to the roof and began jumping, dancing, and braying. The owner climbed up on the roof and whipped the donkey. "Get off of here!" shouted the owner.

"Why are you hitting me when you didn't hit the monkey?" whimpered the donkey.

"Because you, my friend," said the owner, "are not a monkey." CHARLES MUDEDE