The End of the End

The twentieth century, it is safe to say, has made all of us into deep historical pessimists.— Francis Fukuyama

It’s the end of the world as we know itAnd I feel fine. — R.E.M.

Does anyone else feel, against their better judgment, a slight twinge of nostalgia for the 1990s, after the Berlin Wall came down and the internet came into our homes? It is possible, after all, to feel longing for ages that weren’t exactly golden, especially if the one you are experiencing is filled with uncertainty and dread. This is shown in Good Bye, Lenin!, Wolfgang Becker’s film from 2003, in which a young man recreates the conditions of the recently defunct German Democratic Republic in his family’s Berlin apartment, in order to soothe his mother’s heart condition when she awakes from the coma she slipped into before everything changed. Ironically, their place becomes a haven for their...