Sadly Over-hyped

Please don't spend money on this.

A bit overrated, but still an amazing film

Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

I am of such a age that i saw the cold war espionage thriller The Spy Who Came In From The Cold and as i remember it a BAFTA winning film with Richard Burton from 1966 when that film first came out and the nuclear cloud of the cold war was very much alive. Back then i doubt if i thought the two Germany's would ever be united again. I went to see West expecting a modern update drama full of dubious espionage the film wrong footed me so successfully that it must of been 85% through its running time before the penny dropped on me that i was watching a socially conscious movie examining the personal pain of Germany's enforced post World War 2 split. I really liked this movie which was slow and careful, superbly acted and written and directed with a studied coldness, i also thought it explained itself very well with modest little history lessons that never seemed to preach or to lecture. In short a rewarding alternative to my normal diet of factory Hollywood.

A drama about a mother and son who manage to emigrate from East Germany to West Germany during the era of the Cold War. The transition is complicated by the ongoing requirements of the immigration centre in order to obtain West German citizenship. Further complications arise as her son's father, who they believed dead from an accident in the Soviet Union, is suspected by Western secret services of being alive and having been a Stasi agent. The mother moves inexorably towards paranoia as she becomes unsure of who she can actually trust.The film captures the atmosphere of the period through incidents, detail and setting. However, at times the film appears a little too concerned with appealing to a potentially broad audience through intrigue, romance and melodrama; understandable but perhaps occasionally unfortunate.

A document of a time passed by. And while I don't think this feels to dated (if you let yourself into the mood and time when the movie playing), you will like what you see. It's a story about people trying to survive, while being confronted by politics and paranoia. It isn't (or rather wasn't easy) to live like this. Even harder to survive when you try to stay in the middle.While some might argue that this feels like a movie of the week type, I'd disagree. It might have a story line that is close to that, but the acting and the framing, lighting and everything else point out that this is more than that. If you like your drama to feel as real as possible (with touches of a thriller), here you go

As others have observed about this film, the idea of a woman who seeks to make a new life for herself (and her son), yet finds it difficult to do so, is territory that has been explored before. And, for people who are familiar with German-language films in general, the ideas explored in this film probably seem very familiar indeed.Speaking as a person who has not seen a significant number of German-language films, I found myself very engaged with this story from start to finish. One of the aspects of this story that I think others might connect with as well, especially for anyone who has ever gone to live in another country for a significant length of time, is how difficult it can be to overcome the many obstacles that exist, some of which are placed in front of you by the government of your new country. Thus of the many challenges that our protagonist has to overcome, seeing how a government official often has to place a stamp in a document to get past them may be all too familiar (and painful) to many of us, regardless of what country we might have gone to live in. Some of the other obstacles put in the way of Nelly in her quest to build a new life will also be very familiar to many, for instance, how the fact that she has an advanced degree, and how her experience with doing research in a lab setting, is looked at as far below the standards of her new country (whereas in all likelihood, she would be more than qualified to do the work in West Germany, just as she had been in East Germany). I suspect that if she had been a man rather than a woman, she might have gotten more favorable treatment -- but that is a topic for another day, and for other films!One of the most important parts of the story has to do with the extent to which Nelly's paranoia gradually increases as time goes by, fueled in no small part by what she is led to believe by the character John Bird. As others have observed (and likely will continue to observe), the way their relationship plays out is one of the less satisfying aspects of this film, and even though I have not read the book, what I've heard from others leads me to believe that John Bird's character in the film is not developed to nearly the extent that it could have been.I found the most fascinating character in the film to be Hans, who is one of the other residents in the government housing complex with Nelly and her son, Alexej. (On a side note, I would say that there are three characters that are particularly well-developed and well- acted, specifically, Alexej, Nelly, and Hans.) In Hans, we have a character whose past is largely unknown to us, and it is through his character that we come to understand to what extent xenophobia is rampant throughout this housing complex, in that he is widely viewed as a Stasi informant. We at first only suspect as much based on dismissive glances in his direction, and ultimately find confirmation that this is the case when he is brutally beaten. It is this type of dynamic, and how it was expressed, that I found to be one of the most insightful aspects of this film. The centerpiece of the film, and in my view its most powerful aspect, is how the relationship between mother and son evolves as they react to their new environment. With Alexej, we observe a very natural inclination to want to spend time with Hans, especially as Nelly's paranoia grows ever stronger, which erodes her relationship with her son. And, Nelly too succumbs to the temptation to paint Hans with the same broad brush as everyone else (other than Alexej). I would say this difference in perspective, between mother and son, on their experiences in their new country, is expressed in a very profound way, and we are left to wonder how it will impact their relationship after the credits roll.