"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.
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.