Abandoned by her husband when her son Alex (Daniel Bruhl) and daughter Ariane (Maria Simon) were still small, Christiane Kerner (Katrin Sass) threw herself into party politics, working with the Young Pioneers (East Germany's answer to scouting), and endlessly petitioning the government for better woman's underwear. But by the late 1980s, unrest has bubbled up, and one evening on her way to a party function, Christiane witnesses the police roughing up Alex at a protest rally. The sight of her beloved government wailing on her cherished progeny is too much for her. She collapses into an eight-month-long coma, during which her entire way of life collapses as well. She awakens into a world where Coca Cola billboards dot the landscape, Ariane has donned the yellow-and-orange uniform of the Burger King worker, and Alex, who one dreamed of becoming an astronaut, has in a way joined the space age by becoming a satellite dish salesman.

Informed by the doctors that even a slight shock might kill his mother, Alex panics. Surely, the changes wrought on the family's homeland constitute more than a "slight shock." It's a problem with seemingly no solution, until he hits on the idea of simply keeping Christiane in the dark, even if it means retrieving the horrible old furniture that Ariane had discarded in favor of new imports from the west and going dumpster diving in search of the cans, boxes, and jars that once contained Christiane's favorite food, state brands now consigned to the trash heap of history along with the government. He recruits everyone from his sister to the family's neighbors to his new girlfriend, Lara (Chulpan Khamatova), into his deception. He even goes as far as preparing to use a VCR to air fake newscasts, and he recruits a childhood idol, an astronaut reduced to driving a taxi, to pretend to be their new government leader. Alex is seemingly prepared for any contingency; when Christiane spies a Coca Cola sign outside her bedroom window, he simply prepares a newscast stating that new research revealed that that most capitalist of American soft drinks was actually an East German invention stolen by the West.

The ruse can only go so far. Ariane chafes under its strictures and it begins to cause friction between Alex and Lara. But even when Christiane eventually does get out of the house, just in time to see a statue of Lenin being borne aloft by helicopter on its way to the dump, Alex continues with the masquerade. He begins to acknowledge that it isn't just his mother he's trying to protect. He is in essence re-creating a world he himself was comfortable living in. And since he is in complete control, he is perfecting it. "The DDR I created for her became the one I would have wished for," he finally admits, even if it's a DDR that exists only within the confines of the family's tiny apartment.

In the west, Goodbye, Lenin! plays like a charming, if somewhat sad, family comedy, an exercise in nostalgia for a utopia that never was. Bruhl is perfect as the determined Alex, and he's well matched by Sass' formidable, if weakened Christiane. And it's easy to empathize with his plight - how many among us have, at some point, lied to our parents to protect them from disappointment? Of course, it seems much more trivial to fudge about one's grades or make a job seem more promising than it really is than to try to re-create the illusion of an unchanging world. But it is the lengths that Alex goes to, as well as the unlikelihood of his success, that lends the movie much of its charm.

In Germany, where the film won the Blue Angel award at the Berlin Festival and eight prizes at the German Film Awards, including Outstanding Film, moviegoers may read more into Alex's situation. There are no doubt jokes lost on western ears. More than that, as a recent article in the Los Angeles Times pointed out, reunification has devastated the East German economy and many young women, in particular, have traveled west seeking a better life. One suspects that for those young women and many of their countrymen, Alex's actions are perfectly understandable, not just in protecting his mother, but in protecting himself from the harsh realities of this brave new world.

There is certainly nothing harsh about this Columbia Tristar DVD, which is a lavishly appointed affair with a thoughtful selection of trailers, including Goodbye, Lenin!'s, and including trailers of Bon Voyage and Monsieur Ibrahim. In addition, there is a mini-making-of featurette, which runs for all of a minute and 15 seconds, and is basically a behind-the-scenes montage. There is also a 10-minute featurette that compiles all of Alex's phony news casts in one place and another 20-minute featurette, "Lenin: Learning to Fly" that discusses in depth the film's special effects, from working with blue screens to the difficulty in designing a believable looking CGI statue of Lenin. Director Becker, it seems, had very definite ideas of what this statue should look like and rode the effects department until they got it right.

But the special features don't end there. There are two audio commentaries, one by Becker and the other by the cast. Both are in German with English subtitles. In many ways the cast commentary is rather pointless—there are just too many people on it and most of the time they don't have much that's pertinent to say, and it's not always easy to tell who's even speaking. But Becker's commentary is well worth listening to. It encompasses everything from the challenge of trying re-create East Berlin circa 1989, when so much of it has completely changed, to explaining some of the history and some of the changes. Graffiti, for example, he says was a huge problem for him, as there is an epidemic of it in Berlin—before the Wall fell, it was not such an issue, Becker declares; graffiti artists in Berlin used to use chalk.

The disc closes with 39 minutes of deleted scenes, with optional commentary by Becker and Run Lola Run director Tom Tykwer who helped him and editor Peter Adam cut the film down from 164 minutes to its 121-minute final cut. In this case, their remarks are actually more valuable than the scenes that were cut as they explain how editorial decisions were reached, such as the decision to trim scenes with Alex's girlfriend, Lara, in order to make it clear that the movie was about Alex's relationship with his mother and not his budding romance.

Goodbye, Lenin! is a charming piece of work and Columbia Tristar has done an excellent job in pulling this disc together. With the possible exception of the cast commentary, all the bonus features serve the movie and enhance the viewer's enjoyment. This is a DVD that truly deserves that moniker "special edition."