Just watched Goodbye Lenin on DVD. A highly amusing film, which also reminded me of when West and East Germany were separate countries. If seems so long ago that Germany had been divided by ideology, but this film refreshed my memory. The basic plot is that the mother of a family has a heart attack and goes into a coma, just before the fall of the Berlin Wall. She awakens afterwards into a united Germany. When she is discharged, the doctor tells her son that she mustn’t have too much excitement, or she may have another attack. Of course this would be straight forward except she loved the principles of the Deutsche Democratik Republik, so it’s demise might well be an undesirable source of excitement for her. The film courses the great lengths the son and daughter take to try and shield her from the change from communism to capitalism, from food labelling to brash Coca-Cola hoardings, with many amusing moments, entwined with the odd thought-provoking situation. After all, whilst capitalism has its benefits, it also has its disadvantages.