While humans can often analyze the impact our surroundings have on us, it is not as common for humans to try to understand how we influence consciousness and ideologies of others. In “Goodbye, Lenin!” directed by Wolfgang Becker, Alex attempts to shape his mother's conceptions of the new world she lives in through the manipulation of her experiences and material environment, betraying her ideologies as they no longer correspond to the present state of affairs in Germany, as they do not corresponded to the collective ideology of East Germany when he was little. “Goodbye, Lenin!” begins in East Germany before East and West Germany reunite. Marx argues that “the production of ideas, of conceptions, of consciousness is….directly intertwined with material activity…. of men, the language of real life” (409). Although Alex thinks he is helping his mother by “supporting her worldview,” he is actually imposing his ideologies on her, returning to a socialist lifestyle while living a non-socialist life, and using the benefits of capitalism to support his life . deceit. Marx's statement that life determines consciousness turns out to be the defining feature of the film, because not only does Alex not realize that he is imposing his ideologies, but he does not realize that those are his ideologies that he is imposing on his mother. Alex's mother awakens from a coma, Alex works to prevent her from finding out that Germany is reunited. He recreates pre-reunification life by creating a false environment for his mother. This was possible thanks to the new freedoms offered by the fall of the Berlin Wall. It also helps that various events that happen – like the Coca-Cola banner, … middle of paper … Alex is convinced throughout the film that she would panic if she knew the truth. Yet, Alex is the one who would panic if he acted on the truth of his life. He becomes so obsessed with protecting what he believes to be his mother's ideology that it becomes part of the system she created: by living a certain way, his conscience has come to believe it too. He knows that without his input and work, the system he created will fall apart. Yet instead of letting everything fall apart when it gets too difficult, he devises ever more creative lies to keep it in place. His mind's inability to let go of something that everyone else tells him is useless, and is useless once his mother knows the truth, demonstrates Alex's inability to realize that the ideology he has formed is just his, and that he is a subject of it just as his mother is.