Good war movies are all anti-war movies. 'Circle of Deceit' (the original German title is 'Die Fälschung') released on screen in 1981 confirms this. The film occupies a special place in the creation of the German director Volker Schlöndorff. It is a political film and a personal film, the last of the director's first creation period, the last of his films in which the heroes live passionate love stories, derailed or made impossible by wars or social conflicts. Most of the story takes place in Beirut and in the Lebanon torn by civil war, but the political message mainly refers to the relationship between the Western society consuming journalistic sensations and the conflicts that take place in seemingly distant areas of the world (at least so they seemed at that time).
Georg Laschen, the main hero of the film, played by the wonderful actor who was Bruno Ganz, is a war reporter. Two revolutions took place in the reporting and dissemination of international news in the 40 years that have passed since the making of this film. At the end of the 1980s, it was the emergence of cable news which became popular enough in a short time, so that the fall of the Berlin Wall or the first Gulf War were broadcast live worldwide, and the news consumers were exposed directly to the images of the occurring events. A few years later, the Internet became ubiquitous, and every owner of a laptop or mobile phone became not only a consumer of news 24 hours a day, but also a potential source of news and images, instantly accessible anywhere. In the early 1980s, however, the responsibility for generating news was still entrusted to a small group of reporters broadcasting from the hot areas of the globe. The potential to inform and misinform was also present, then as now, in any report and the information has since become commodity. Reporters and photographers risked their lives (for a consistent pay in many cases) but what reached the news consumers were the sensational information, politically filtered by the editors, chosen according to the fashion of the day and the public's current interest for one cause or another. In the film, a flight of several hours transported the hero from the comfortable and safe world in which his only problems were those related to the family, in an area of war where life and violence coexisted in a way that can be understood only by those who have lived in such a part of the world. The process of knowledge that Georg Laschen goes through is not only a course of political education that leads him to reviewing his opinions about good and evil, justice and truth, but also one of personal knowledge. Can love be a savior, or any relationship is just an escapist fun, an illusory and temporary refuge? Can one rely on himself in limit situations? What are the limits? What is any of us able to do to in order to survive?
'Circle of Deceit' offers to Bruno Ganz the opportunity of one of his top creations, and it reinforces my opinion that he was one of the best, if not the best German film actor of the last half century. Hanna Schygulla plays the ambiguous role of a woman who chooses to live her life, femininity, motherhood in the neighborhood of death. This is perhaps not her best role. Much of the filming took place on location in Beirut, in a relatively safe area but close enough to the conflict to provide not only authentic scenery and extras, but also the noises and images of the conflict seen from short distance. This is one of the most realistic films about and against the war that I have seen, a film that blows up the boundaries between fiction and reality, between 'art' and documentary. The director uses in many scenes the style of war reporting, and after a while violence becomes the normal, while the scenes of normal life turn into surrealist experiences. The film was made 40 years ago, and can be considered 'historic' in its details of the Lebanese civil war. In the 40 years since the filming of 'Circle of Deceit' we saw similar images of war, terrorism, destruction, from many other parts of the world in fiction films and in the news. The change is that distances seem to have become smaller, the seemingly distant conflicts became actuality for all areas of the world because of the flow of refugees or the global export of terrorism. The individual confrontation with the absurdity of war and violence as true as ever.
