dunkles bier & dunklerer film

I'm not in the best shape to sniff out all the details of beer right now, what with a drippy nose.  I blame early classes and late movies.  I only had time to run to the supermarket for a suitable beer to go with the movie, although not in the cinema.  Franziskaner isn't a small or unknown beer, although I don't often see the dark version, but it fits the bill this once.

Even labeled "Imported"

A little sweetness pierces the snot curtain, so I assume the smell must be good and strong.  The beer comes out surprisingly cloudy and light brown, although since it is Franziskaner I shouldn't be surprised at the cloudiness.  The head disappears pretty rapidly, leaving only a thin layer on top.  It does have a sweet taste, but with that unmistakable wheaty tang.  At first that sharpness influences me to think of this as a summer beer, but really, with a little more sipping it lines up well with darker and even sweeter, heavier beers that are pleasing in the colder months.

I could have used a black beer to go with this movie, or one of those more complex ales, because boy oh boy is this a frustrating story.  Not because Die Lüger der Sieger/The Lies of the Victors is a poorly done movie, but because of the questions that get left unanswered and the answers that we do get.  A rock star kind of journalist is looking for his next big story when his boss asks him to work with the new intern.  Grumpy, he tells her to look through a tabloid looking paper, and get more information on a man who killed himself by throwing himself into a lions' enclosure at a nearby zoo.  The intern uncovers some odd things, which in turn interest the star journalist, and they keep digging.  Leads take them, and the viewer, to suspect the German army, the German government, and business of callous treatment of soldiers/constituents/employees.  The liars are clearly identified in the film, but who they actually are and who they really work for is not.  They lay a trail of false proof to pull the journalists off the truth, and the sensational story is published.  Almost immediately afterwards, the number one journalists discovers the lies, although not the truth, and is forced to quit his job rather than admit he made a mistake and his employer bought into it.  The liars hack into his computers to check what information he has and even his blood sugar monitor to trick him into injecting more insulin than he needs, almost killing him.  Another unanswered question is who finds him passed out in the street and gets help, since all we see are a cigarette being dropped and some droopy women's boots stomping it out.  The intern smokes, but a phone call later places her in another city.  An actress hired by the liars to play the part of an informant wore similar boots while playing another, more "legitimate", role.  Maybe it was just a good Samaritan.  The most aggravating thing about the film is that, while it is fiction, the situation it describes of little people with problems being ignored by those with power and groups working for the power structure actively preventing good information from being known is not only believable, but what we're probably experiencing every day without even knowing it.