In war-torn Beirut, German journalist Georg Laschen (Ganz) covers the action from an enclave of Western observers in a hotel just outside the blasted areas filled with snipers and guerilla soldiers. Along with his photographer (Jerzy Skolimowski), he tries to take the moral high ground in his coverage but finds the situation increasingly difficult as he becomes entangled with an old flame, Arianna (Schygulla), a German whose marriage to a now-deceased Arab has left her searching in vain for an unclaimed orphan baby to adopt. Opportunities present themselves to capture harrowing, violent images on film and in print, and Georg must eventually draw the line between capturing the big scoop and preserving his soul.
Obviously in today's climate it's impossible to watch Circle of Deceit (German title: Die Falschung) without conjuring images from the turmoil in Iraq, specifically the chilling, snuff-style video executions of abductees like Daniel Pearl. While the coverage of Iraq remains diluted and hopelessly tempered for mass audiences, this film offers some indication of the actual circumstances in a zone teetering on chaos. Schlondorff and his crew shot everything on location, with loaded ammunition and real participants involved throughout the production. Coupled with the excellent performances, it's a gripping, intensely harrowing film with a solid emotional core as both the adulterous Georg and bicultural Arianna find the conflict mirroring the transformations occurring within themselves.
Released by United Artists during its amazing flurry of lucrative foreign imports in the late '70s and early '80s, this 1981 film was lost in the shuffle as it jockeyed for screen space with more digestible imports like Diva. Viewers expecting another "heightened reality" treatment of war like Schlondorff's previous The Tin Drum were no doubt disoriented by the unflinching realism on view here, complete with disturbingly realistic corpses. Time has been more than kind to this film, which looks more astonishing now than it probably did upon its release; despite such concessions as a (very good) poetic score by Maurice Jarre, this feels more like a documentary than a standard commercial film.
Kino's DVD presents a solid anamorphic transfer, almost as impressive as Criterion's treatment of other Schlondorff titles. The fly-on-the-wall cinematography appears to be framed correctly, and the optional English subtitles (for German dialogue as well as the variety of other tongues present in the film) are literate and well-written. Extras include a still gallery and two featurettes with Schlondorff, one recorded during filming and one in the present day. The information in both tends to overlap, but he offers a solid sketch of the film's tumultuous production and explains the ideas he's trying to get across with this, an important reality-based stunner deserving of a much larger audience.
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by Nathaniel Thompson
