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Such a frustrating disappointment

Really Surprised!

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

The acting in this movie is really good.

"Die Fälschung" is a West German movie from 1981, so this one had its 35th anniversary last year. This was made by director Volker Schlöndorff briefly after his "Die Blechtrommel" won an Oscar. He is also one of the people who adapted the Nicolas Born novel for the screen here and he got help by illustrious names like Margarethe von Trotta and Jean-Claude Carrière. The cast of this film that runs for slightly under 110 minutes isn't too shabby either. Bruno Ganz plays the male lead, Hanna Schygulla the female lead and they both were nominated for a German Film Award for their performances. Jerzy Skolimowski, actually a successful filmmaker himself, won a German Film Award even for his supporting performance and there are more known names in here, especially Gila von Weitershausen. This is the story of a journalist who divides to travel to Beirut, Lebanon, in order to report right at the center of it all about the conflict between the Christians and Palestinians, a conflict that is still oh so present today several decades later.Unfortunately the film never really to make an impact on me, neither in terms of the war footage nor in terms of the relationship struggles with several women of the protagonist. In the end it was somewhat nicely done the way they showed how this aforementioned almost drove him to insanity, but it's just not worth sitting through everything before that. I like Bruno Ganz quite a bit, which is why I was a bit disappointed here how not even he managed to make this worth watching for me. Schygulla, however, I have never been big on and this isn't changing through this film either. She always comes off as fairly try-hard to me and lacks in subtlety in a way the character really would have needed. Then again, I have never been a big Schlöndorff fan, also not of "Tin Drum, which I mentioned earlier, so I am not surprised actually this one appealed to me so little. There is something to his style that I maybe just can't appreciate. I like fact-based films that are bleak by other filmmakers, but Schlöndorff just does very very little for me. But maybe it is also von Trotta's impact as I find her even worse judging some of the stuff I have seen. I have to give this one a thumbs-down and it's quite a shame it did not work out better as the subject sure is an interesting one. Watch something else instead.

Volker Schlöndorff became one of the doyens of New German Cinema in the 1960s and 1970s, along with Wim Wenders and Rainer Werner Fassbinder. Schlöndorff's work included "The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum", "The Tin Drum" and "Die Fälschung" ("Circle of Deceit" in English). This one casts Bruno Ganz as a journalist sent to Lebanon to report on the civil war there. The movie never takes sides in the war, instead focusing on the journalist's realization that it's hard to be neutral in a situation where all sides are shooting at each other. Even more impressive is that they filmed on location in war-torn Beirut. Apparently they filmed in "safe" sections of the city but could see evidence of the fighting. Beirut, once known as the Paris of the Middle East, became a proxy war between Israel and its Maronite allies, and Syria and its Shiite allies, and other factions. As bad as things were when they filmed "Circle of Deceit", Lebanon had yet to see the Sabra and Shatila massacres (when Phalangists massacred Palestinian refugees).Anyway, it's a really good, really intense movie. The ethical questions surrounding reporting on war are probably some of the most important, and the movie does a fine job looking at them. I recommend it.

Lacking even a token gesture of Hollywood gloss, this inside look at the Lebanese civil war is strong stuff indeed, which may be why it never found an audience (in this country at least) when first released. The filmmakers made use of actual Beirut locations to follow the brutal, ambiguous account of one journalist's education into the abject moral poverty of violence, and the documentary realism of the background lends a frightening authority to the subject. It's difficult at times to tell just what is real and what is staged, and the essential nihilism of the conflict is further reinforced by the film's detachment from any political sympathies, although there's something uncomfortable in the idea of a German citizen pondering the immorality of genocide. We're led to assume his private and professional ethics are being tested in the face of such extreme bloodshed, but it's hard to avoid making deeper historical connections.

This film should be seen by all.The picture of a civil war is excellent and could relate to many other places like Bosnia.It is very clearly shown how people behave in such absurd situations : some accept them and change but other maintain their humanity. Particularly chocking is the treatment of children, presented in such a realistic way that the film looks as a documentary ( may be it is a documentary for this part ?).When you listen to a sister treating the small boy as an object bought in a departments store or a doctor suggesting to change ill boy for another you would like to cry.Fortunately Hanna Schigulla is there and her radiating presence is bringing such a humane note that you maintain your hope in the human race.