Word: beirutization
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Some observers believe that Sharon is set on retaliating against P.L.O. activity by staging a small raid, which in turn would cause the Palestinians to strike back in force. That would give Israel the excuse to mount a full-scale invasion, defeat the P.L.O. in the Beirut area and then vanquish the Syrians if they were foolish enough to get involved. The P.L.O. would be routed and, the thinking goes, would shift its attention to Jordan, overthrow King Hussein and turn the country into a Palestinian state. Israel would meanwhile annex the West Bank...
...invasion. The U.S. chose to put the best possible interpretation on that carefully hedged assurance. Said one U.S. official: "We take Prime Minister Begin at his word." In Lebanon, P.L.O. Chairman Arafat, meeting with his organization's high command around a conference table in a subbasement deep beneath a Beirut apartment building, argued that it is to the P.L.O.'s advantage to let the Israelis strike first, both because he believes they would sustain heavy casualties and because they would be branded as the aggressors. Arafat has told his restless officers that if they let the Israelis attack...
...movie succeeds in interweaving the psychological and the political into a dense web that forces the viewer to get involved. The Deer Hunter did; it made Vietnam an integral element, never just a backdrop. Circle of Deceit, on the other hand, turns the rubble and bodies of present-day Beirut into mere mental furniture for its protagonist. It could just as well have been Angola, Iran or El Salvador. And as an Everymodernman, the protagonist could have been French or American as well as German...
...outrage of bidding against a rival reporter for photos of carnage, but he does it anyway. He is genuinely disturbed when he realizes the execution of a family has been staged specifically for him. But his preoccupations with his own family, and now with a German widow in Beirut drown out the outside world...
...posters for the movie suggest a tale of suspense and intrigue, portraying Ganz and Schygulla crawling along what seems to be a dark passageway. Actually, they are dragging themselves along the carpeted floor of her mansion into the bedroom where they will fiddle as Beirut burns. There is no suspense, no tension in this film only the sustained drone of suppressed angst. Circle of Deceit lacks the mythic color and intensity of Schlondorff's best-known film The Tin Drum. Where the bizarre fantasy of The Tin Drum terrifies and disgusts, the efficient realism of Circle of Deceit fades into...