Peer Kling. Photo: Gisa Stein – Advertisement –
“Deadline? Oops! When do I have to finish?” “I’d prefer by yesterday.” Oh, um, yes, (stutter) there are lots of films about time machines. Maybe NOW would be the opportunity? OK, I’m making something about a machine, but it’s not a time machine, it’s a money machine, in the figurative sense anyway.
In twelve months, it will be the 35th anniversary of reunification. That’s almost half a human lifetime to come to terms with the GDR. After the point of no return, the films about the GDR made after the “two become one” date became a genre of their own. Well-known examples are: “Good Bye, Lenin!” (2003, dir. Wolfgang Becker); “The Lives of Others” (2006, dir. Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck); “Sonnenallee” (1999, dir. Leander Haußmann); and “In Times of Diminishing Light” (2017, dir. Matti Geschonneck).
Good comments, tips and more film titles have been City newspaper tip from Berlin.
Well, and the film “2:1” by the film, special drama and crime scene director Natja Brunckhorst, who played the lead role in “We Children from Bahnhof Zoo” in 1980 at the tender age of 14, fits exactly into this series. And while we’re talking about ratios of numbers to numbers, the probability that one of the 650 annual film releases in Germany will make it to an announcement on the Tagesschau feels like 1:216. The film “2:1” managed it. That may be due to the importance of the topic for recent German history. Wow, bravo! I don’t want to give away any details now.
It’s about money, a lot of money, and how you can use a bizarre idea to get hold of the disgusting little banknotes covered in bacteria. In the last days of the GDR, the exchange rate for savings, East-West exchange, no, exchange, was 2:1. In June 2020, Theo Waigel revealed facts to the Tagesspiegel about the feat of strength associated with the monetary union: “The Bundesbank had to transport 440 million banknotes worth around 13.5 billion DM and weighing 460 tons across the inner-German border by truck…” That makes me think of the film “The Gentlemen Ask for Payment” from 1966, when I still needed a special permit to watch TV.
But don’t worry, “2:1” is almost non-violent and not a film about bank robbers. The funny thing is, this film story actually happened. But because it was so embarrassing for the authorities, it was, let’s say, covered up and the perpetrators were, if you will, concealed or hidden. In any case, they got off lightly. In terms of audacity, this story is, for me, right next to the 18-year-old Rust landing in a Cessna on Red Square in 1987. Non-violent, intelligent crimes have their appeal. 2:1 is also an allusion to the love triangle between Robert (Max Riemelt), Volker (Ronald Zehrfeld) and Maren (Sandra Hüller), which I could watch for hours – well, 1 hour 56 minutes.
A key position is occupied by the GDR 200s and 500s, which officially didn’t exist, but somehow did. I won’t say any more than that. I liked the mixture of audacity and outrageous amateurism at all levels in the area of tension between the bureaucracy of responsibility and graffiti sinners as an ironic, winking poke fun at the socialism-capitalism debate. The Dostoyevsky quote: “Money is minted or printed freedom” has stuck in my wallet. “2:3” is showing on Monday 2nd and Tuesday 3rd September at the Kuba-Kino.
