Circle of Deceit is a film that hammers away at its points and still manages to say precious little. It even violates its own main message. Nevertheless, it is a remarkable film in two respects. First, it was shot entirely in Lebanon in the midst of that country's civil war, on streets where the cast and crew were literally in danger of becoming casualties. Second, it offers some exquisite acting by two of Germany's bests screen performers. Circle of Deceit was directed by Volker Schlöndorff.

Historical Background: Volker Schlöndorff was born on March 31st, 1939 in Wiesbaden, Germany. His father was a physician and the family moved to Paris in 1956. Schlöndorff studied political science and economics at the Sorbonne before entering film school. After graduating, he worked as an assistant successively with Louis Malle, Alain Resnais, and Jean-Pierre Melville. His first feature film was Young Torless (1966). It was a veiled condemnation of the complicity of the German people in Nazi atrocities. Schlöndorff was as politically radical, in his own way, as his contemporary German directors, Herzog, Fassbinder, and Wenders, though less innovative in film style. His foremost success as a filmmaker was The Tin Drum (1979), which won an Oscar for Best Foreign Film and shared the Palme d'Or at Cannes with Apocalypse Now. Circle of Deceit was Schlöndorff's very next feature after The Tin Drum, although he made a documentary called Der Kandidat (1981), in between.

The Story: It is the winter of 1979/80 and a journalist from Hamburg, Georg Laschen (Bruno Ganz), is being sent to Lebanon to cover the tragic civil war there. He specializes in covering war zones, which may be the cause of the inner turmoil that is contributing to the problems in his marriage to Greta (Gila von Weitershausen). The pair has a couple of children but are very close to separating. They manage one last steamy lovemaking session (without so much as waiting for the kid standing in their bedroom doorway to exit, which is strange and unexplained). Whatever the nature of their marital discord (also never explained), it doesn't appear to relate to their sex life.

Laschen's partner for the work in Lebanon is photographer Hoffmann (Jerzy Skolimowski). Laschen and Hoffmann are quartered in a seaside, luxury hotel with the rest of the Western press, only a block or so from the so-called no-man's land separating eastern and western sectors of Beirut. The political objectives of the warring factions are never explained but we understand that one group (on the east side) is composed of Christians, called Phalangists, while the other is comprised of Moslems (on the west side). Laschen suggests that these are basically "people who want to purge their God of all competing gods." The center of the city has been reduced to rubble by the relentless bombings and shootings, but most of the violence occurs at night. Snipers fire from the damaged shells of high rise buildings, killing pedestrians foolish enough to remain stationary for any period of time.

Laschen and Hoffmann are there to get stories and pictures that will sell papers back in Germany. Somewhat surprisingly, neither group of combatants is camera shy or especially hostile toward the press. They're more than happy to help Laschen and his photographer cover shootings from their sniper nests and even atrocities. One of the snipers even asks Hoffmann whether he'd prefer that he shoot the man walking on the right or the one on the left, in a pair of pedestrians on the street below. The main danger for Laschen and Hoffmann is the risk of getting shot accidentally, by snipers, rather than being shot intentionally.

Rudnik (Jean Carmet), a man who traffics illegal arms, offers Laschen a set of photographs that record an atrocity in a smaller city, some miles to the south. The seller touts the photos, saying, "These things will thrill the folks back home. Dirty pictures to look at in clean places. People need that to appreciate their own lives." Then, turning to one especially dramatic photo (mercifully not shown on screen), he adds, "He's got her by the hair. Dragging her away. No need to say what's coming next when you know that for a young Moslem woman, rape is worse than death or torture." Laschen gets outbid, ultimately, by a Swedish journalist.

Most of the journalists are neutral, as good journalists are supposed to be. There doesn't appear to be any special moral validity on either side anyway. Berger (Peter Martin Urtel), a journalist who works for a competing German paper, clearly favors the Christians over the Moslems, though his reasons run no deeper than sharing the same religion. "They behave abominably," he say, "but they're closer to us than the Fatah. The Phalangists will definitely win. They're efficient. And what's wrong with efficiency?" He's talking about efficient mass murders. Hoffmann has no such bias, he's just indifferent, so long as he gets dramatic pictures. Laschen says of Hoffmann, "He's a very good photographer. He only sees what he sees. He leaves the doubting to me."

The principle subplot involves Laschen renewing an affair with a German widow living in Beirut, Arianna Nassar (Hanna Schygulla). She had been married to an Arab and still lives with the man's sister. Arianna wants to adopt an orphaned child in Lebanon, but neither the Catholics nor the Moslems are willing to turn over a child to a Catholic women who had been married to a Moslem. She is finally offered a foundling whose parents (and religious heritage) are unknown, but who is possibly brain-damaged. The romance between Georg and Arianna also provides the film with a second steamy love scene as well as another example, in the end, of deceit.

Themes: Though Schlöndorff makes a point of not explaining the political motivations of the combatants who are involved in this particular example of the idiocy of war, I'll provide some background. Lebanon was inhabited since prehistoric times. The Phoenicians were the earliest of those people (flourishing from 3000 B.C.) about whom much is known. They were sailors, traders, and explorers and organized themselves into city-states along the coast. Beginning around 1800 B.C., the region was controlled in succession by the Egyptians, Hittites, Assyrians, Babylonians, and Persians, all of whom provided a Moslem influence. The Romans gained control beginning in 64 B.C. and Christianity was introduced into the region around 325 A.D. Many of the people living in what is now Lebanon became Christians. After the fall of Rome, Lebanon continued under Christian influence as part of the Byzantine Empire until about 600 A.D. After 600 A.D., the region came under the control of Arabs. Islam began to replace Christianity in the coastal communities but the people in the mountainous parts of the country held onto their Christian beliefs. That, in effect, is how the country came to be of mixed religious affiliations.

Now, skipping ahead to the twentieth century, Lebanon was under control of the Ottoman Empire up until World War I, when it was occupied by British and French troops. The French took control of the political system of Lebanon in 1922 and began establishing institutions that would ultimately lead to independence. Lebanon gained full independence in 1943, under a constitution that provided for power sharing by the Christians and Moslems. During the next fifteen years, Lebanon enjoyed an unprecedented period of both harmony and prosperity. That makes the thirty years of turmoil that followed after 1958 all the more unfathomable. The people of Lebanon had already experienced success in working together for mutual benefit.

The upheaval began in 1958. An effort on the part of the Christian-controlled government to strengthen the country's ties with the West led to a rebellion among a segment of the Moslem population. The country's president invited the U.S. to send in marines to restore order and they stayed from July to October of 1958. In 1969, refugees from Palestine, fighting as the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO), began using southern Lebanon as a base of operations for attacks on Israel. Israel retaliated, raiding the PLO strongholds. Lebanese Christians opposed the PLO while the Moslems supported them. In 1975, full-scale civil war erupted in Lebanon over the PLO question. Tens of thousands of Lebanese civilians were killed on both sides. Syria sent troops into Lebanon in the spring of 1976 (some remain there as of this writing, though the Bush administration is pressuring Syria to withdraw them). After the Syrian occupation, fighting became more sporadic, with Christians opposing both the Syrians and the Lebanese Moslems. A U.N. "peacekeeping" force was sent into Lebanon in 1978. Circle of Deceit picks up at about this point, in Beirut. The war was to continue until about 1985 and terrorist attacks and assassinations were frequent up to about 1991. In 1982, Lebanon was occupied by Syrian, Israeli, U.S., French, British, and Italian troops, all at the same time. Some readers may recall the terrorist bombing of the Marine headquarters at Beirut airport, on October 23rd, 1983, that killed 241 U.S. troops.

Even worse than the ideological divide separating the Christians and Moslems in Lebanon was the fact that the motivation for the war had as much to do with profiteering as political objectives. The war was conducted mainly by a number of independent warlords. Warmongering provided income for the warlords because various foreign governments wanted to influence the outcome. For the young men, soldiering for one faction or another was the best paying job available in Lebanon, at the time. Some of the atrocities were staged for the express purpose of fanning hatred to an extent that would ensure that the profitable business of making war would continue. For the civilian population of both sides, it was hell, but for the young lads, it was a way to earn a living.

Schlöndorff wants us to recognize the stupidity of the killing and not to worry too much about the details. He's delivering a heavy dose of cynicism about war and the dialog is none to subtle while the point is being made. Schlöndorff condemns all parties in the conflict, including the Western media that exploited the war for its entertainment value for the folks back home. Laschen becomes increasingly disgusted with what he does for a living. "What a fat, depraved, little sophist I am!" he says. "All I do is entertain. I stick to the facts, but it's still mere entertainment."

The problem with that theme is that Schlöndorff pretty much ends up doing what amounts to the same thing with his film. He exploits the horrors of the situation in Lebanon to give us some exciting footage, mixing fiction with real-life turmoil. He tosses in a little gratuitous sex as well. Those entertainment values are not accompanied by a clear thematic message or any basis for better understanding war or human nature, which reduces us to the status of the readers of Laschen's newspaper stories with Hoffmann's pictures.

Schlöndorff makes a half-hearted attempt at drawing parallels between war and the psychic pain in Laschen's personal life. Marriage is war, we are being encouraged to conclude. Or, possibly, that Laschen has his own personal war going on in his mind. Schlöndorff suggests, in his interview on the DVD, that Laschen was at home in the chaos of Lebanon because it reflected his own inner turmoil. The metaphor doesn't work especially well and is left hanging in the end. Laschen arrives home and sits in his car looking out at his wife through a rain soaked windshield as if crying inside, but we never learn how their relationship plays out.

In the Making of Circle of Deceit extra that accompanies the film on the Kino video, Schlöndorff acknowledges that he has no idea why his protagonist kills a man who falls on top of him during the general panic following a bombing. No foundation is provided in the film for comprehending this act. I can't imagine how viewers are supposed to make sense out of a film when the director has failed to reach any conclusion about why his characters do what they do. I'm an analytical kind of person and I want films to make some kind of sense. Schlöndorff seems not to care about coherency. He's content with mood paintings. The result is an exercise in hypocrisy. The film's main point is how disgusting it is that the media uses war to entertain those of us living in affluent democracies, but then Schlöndorff ends up doing exactly that and no more.

Production Values: The script for this film is very heavy handed. The dialog beats viewers over the head at various points. If you've read my plot synopsis above, you may have noted how terribly unsubtle the quotations are.

The film's outstanding feature is its location shooting and cinematography. Schlöndorff made the unusual choice to avoid gritty, documentary like photography. He wanted his film to have more of a dramatic, operatic look to it. There are lots of crane shots and tracking shots, creating a real contrast between the bleak, devastation of the streets of Beirut and the beauty of the photography. Many of the shots are very effectively composed. All of the extras were actual soldiers. At night they fought and during the day they worked for Schlöndorff! They used live ammunition, not blanks, for the action scenes. The special effects team blew up real structures and didn't even have to get permits! In one scene shot at a beach, Laschen and Hoffmann come across the remains of burned corpses. Schlöndorff had arranged for fake "body parts" to be shipped in from Italy. Schlöndorff tells a story in one of the extras about how the Italian artist left the various fake bodies and body parts lying around his apartment and caused a great uproar when one of the cleaning ladies walked in and came across what she assumed to be a massacre. Later, when those fake body parts were strewn on the beach by the crew, some kids who were watching the filming decided that the fake ones didn't look real enough and fetched a plastic bag full of genuine body parts that had been gathered from a recent atrocity! Those were the conditions under which this film was made.

Bruno Ganz was apparently unhappy with the lack of guidance that he received from Schlöndorff for his part. Schlöndorff was preoccupied with setting up the shots and managing the extras. Nevertheless, Ganz delivered an exceptional performance. Some of Ganz's other best roles were in The American Friend (1977), Nosferatu, the Vampire (1978), Knife in the Head (1978), Wings of Desire (1987), Strapless (1989), The Last Days of Chez Nous (1993), and Eternity and a Day (1998). It's always nice to see Hanna Schygulla. Some of her other work includes roles in Effi Briest (1974), The Marriage of Maria Braun (1978), Berlin Alexanderplatz (1979), Lili Marleen (1981), and La Nuit de Varennes (1982). Schygulla identified so thoroughly with her role that she remained for a while in Lebanon after the shooting and went looking for a baby to adopt, just as had her character in the film. She ran into the same kind of resistance that her character encountered. The third best performance in the film belongs to character actor Jean Carmet, as the arms peddler. His other work includes Just before Nightfall (1971), The Tall Blond Man with One Black Shoe (1972), as Maurice, and Black and White in Color (1976).

Bottom-Line: In fairness to Schlöndorff, I should acknowledge that my personal regard for his films appears to be less than that of some other movie lovers and critics. I gave just three stars to The Tin Drum, which is clearly harsher than the consensus view on that film. I'm also going to give just three stars to Circle of Deceit, which is a bit lower than the average of ratings for it elsewhere. I used the term "unfocused" in explaining my dissatisfaction with The Tin Drum and the same term applies here as well. Circle of Deceit is entertaining and, at times, dramatic, but it doesn't end up saying anything especially coherent about war in general or about Lebanon in particular.

Kino's DVD transfer is excellent. I had trouble with the secondary menu on my copy. I was never able to get one of the two documentary extras to play. I watched the 29 minute featurette on the making of the film but was unable to watch the 15 minutes interview with Schlöndorff from 2004. Circle of Deceit is in several languages, but mostly German, with English subtitles. The running time is 108 minutes.

Recommended:
No

Viewing Format: DVD
Video Occasion: Better than Watching TV
Suitability For Children: Not suitable for Children of any age