Die Lügen der Sieger (2014) Reviews

• Sloppy and relentlessly bleak filmmaking.

  Sergeant_Tibbs2015-04-20

  Few filmmakers have successfully made a good political thriller in the modern age with the advent of a constantly updating pool of technology. Problems can be easily solved, created, reduced, or obscured using methods that involve certain brand names that will probably be irrelevant shortly afterwards.This film shows how clunky it can be with idiotic claims and techniques that even the most basically technically capable person can see through. This is only a small part of what's wrong with director Christoph Hochhausler's The Lies of the Victors, a film that comes with good intentions but it's just too clumsy with its parts in order to work. The convenience of a political thriller is that you can paint a picture of corruption while showing as little as possible. Most of the on screen action can be confined to talking or snooping, uncovering only small details. It's often a restrained and intelligent portion of the genre. Unfortunately, for The Lies of the Victors neither story is particularly interesting nor convincing.Two journalists, one a diabetic gambling womanizer (Florian David Fitz) and the other a plucky intern (Lillith Stangenberg), find themselves working together as her story of a man who committed suicide by jumping in a lion pit is connected to his investigation into army veterans who are forced into industrial waste jobs. The cast is generally solid, but the writing hardly gives them an opportunity to shine. Given such little information and development with the characters, it's difficult to invest or root for them. A lot of it feels like pseudo-science, but I don't know enough to dispute. Can toxic waste lead you to delusions that you can talk to big cats? I doubt it. The film takes itself too seriously to not find yourself bugged by it for the rest of the film.To its credit, it makes great use of fluid photography, gliding around characters in a cinematic way, even if their choices of wide angle lenses warp the edges of the frame a little too much. To its discredit, I haven't seen editing as bad as this in a long time. They are not Angus Wall and Kirk Baxter. You cannot go at this frenetic pace and hope to come out with a coherent outcome. There is no sense of rhythm and it completely loses you right away. The film is chewed up, spat out, and looks like a poor music video. It often cuts out the boring parts such as a character walking from one side of the room to another. Maybe they're just trying to cut down the runtime, but it wasn't worth the effort. Self-indulgent flourishes like using a clip of Humphrey Bogart to illustrate Hochhausler's message about the press for him doesn't help the film's case.This is a downbeat film complete with a bleak point about media manipulation and cynicism with political lobbyists. It's one that does quite resonate in certain ways if not chill to the bone like the film wants to while its execution leaves you cold instead. A true story may have been a better choice than making stuff up like this. 5/10

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• Germany does cover-up / politics thriller - not a success

  Horst_In_Translation2019-01-14

  "Die Lügen der Sieger" or "Lichtjahre" or "The Lies of the Victors" is a German/French co-production from 2014, so this film has its 5th anniversary this year and it was directed by Christoph Hochhäusler, who is also part of the writing duo in charge of the script here. It runs for 110 minutes and the star here is lead actor Florian David Fitz, a star here in Germany for sure now, and this is one of his more serious works, unusually serious a bit almost as normally you see him nextg to Schweighöfer or there is at least a slightly lighter side to his characters and films. This is the story of a journalist who comes across the story of a former soldier who commited suicide by jumping into a lion's area atg the zoo. What seemed initially just a way to help him be on his own and without his initially annoying new assistant quickly develops its own mentality as there proves to be far more behind this story than it initially seems and he runs into people sabotaging his work in all professions, even his own colleagues and superiors. The truth must out. But will it come out. Was it really just a suicide or what is behind these happening. In the process of it all, the only one he can rely on is the new assistant (played by Lilith Stangenberg, known from Wild and yes she is pretty stunning here too), so the two grow inevitably closer and eventually become a couple. Okay, that needs to be done in German films. There is literally always some kind of romance story line involved, butg here it does not add too much. A bit of a shame the film lacks focus in the key area and key plot most of the time because in theory this could have been a pretty good movie in my opinion, something to getg you on the edge of your seat, but the talent just isn't there. There are even hardly any only slightly memorable scenes for this one and the showy baity all-in ending that also did not feel too realistic cannot really make up for all the lengths before that. That lack of realism is a bit of a key problem here because this is the one area where they are really trying to make an impact. As a whole, the acting could have been better too, but that is also a problem that you cannot really blame the actors for. Most of the supporting cast have so little impact and screen time that even Daniel Day-Lewis in their feet could not have made it work. Fitz seems rather lackluster from start to finish, even if that is his character's sobering approach, which does not help matters either. Stangenberg is better I think, but maybe that is just the hetero male inside me speaking. I can see why she was castg for Wild though after her turn here. Some great aura around her. Overall, I am not too disappointed this was Hochhäusler's most recent work, still is today as I am not impressed. The outcome is clearly a missed opportunity. Watch something else instead.

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