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Angelus: "Right-wingers hate this movie because of the relatively sympathetic portrayal of the protagonist, and allowing us to experience the GDR through her positive perceptions of it. Films like this do not fit into the post-reunification consensus of equating right and left as equally 'totalitarian'."-------------------------------------
Me: I love "The Legend of Rita" but Schlondorff's portrayal of both his protagonist and the GDR is highly ambiguous. It opens with "The Intnernationale" being played on a children's toy piano as it shows Rita and her comrades robbing their first bank. When Rita crosses over to the GDR she is presented with a reality that conflicts with her idealistic idea of a socialist state. In one scene Rita is told by her co-workers that the money the factory solicits for the struggle in Nicaragua is a scam and will never make it into the hands of the Sandinistas. The main sub-narrative of the GDR section is Rita's best friend's struggle with despair and suicide. Rita chooses to remain within an ideological bubble despite the changing political reality she is presented with.