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| Two To One |
Three best friends. Two countries in the process of reuniting. One giant pile of phased-out money, left in a mine tunnel to rot. Natja Brunckhorst’s delightful new comedy, Two To One, tells the story of a fabulous heist carried out by East German citizens who discover a loophole in their pre-unification currency exchange system and exploit it for all it’s worth, exchanging stolen East German marks for flashy new products they can then sell on for Western ones. It stars Sandra Hüller, Max Riemelt and Ronald Zehrfeld, and screened earlier this year at the Glasgow Film Festival. Since it’s now coming out in cinemas, Natja and I met up for a chat, and began by discussing the best thing of all about it.
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| Two To One |
“Yes, it's based on a true story,” she says, “and it's a true story that no one knew in Germany. I found it in an old book. I just found one sentence: ‘the whole Eastern money was brought into a mine tunnel.’ I was like, ‘What?’ It was millions, you know? Millions of money just brought into a mine tunnel. And I thought that that's enough, you know? I started researching because I thought ‘That's cinema.’
“While researching I found out there really were thieves who went in. I never met the thieves, so that's what I made up, the family, the people, how are they have their struggles with the time, and whatever. But I also researched that a lot. I talked to a lot of people at that time and I thought, ‘This is really cinema. It's money and justice.’”
I ask how much she personally remembers about that period in German history.
“I was 22 at that time, and actually I was in an acting school,” she tells me. “I was born in Berlin, but the school was far away from that, and I was very focused on my studying. And I thought ‘Oh, the wall is down. Okay, now I have to study.’” She laughs. “Maybe that's why I'm so interested.
“I have been to talk to all the people about what happened to them in that time. You know, I'm born in West Germany, but I only took actors who were born in East Germany, so if I do something wrong, they can tell me. And it's about humor. You can make humor over someone or with someone, you know? And I thought ‘These are my heroes. I will never laugh about them because the hair is not right or whatever. I want to laugh with them and not over them.’
“It's so easy, you know? It's 30 years ago. You give them something to wear and you say ‘That's funny, to wear that.’ No, I didn't do that. I talked to the costume designer [Joy Braun] and said ‘Please take things out of the time, but they all look good,’ and she did a wonderful job.”
It's unusual, I note, to see East Germany portrayed in bright color and with the sun shining. It's very different from the propaganda at the time. Everything was dark colors, and it's still that way because it's always from the Western point of view that we see it.
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| Two To One |
She nods. “It's the Western point of view, but if you ask people who lived there, they didn't feel like that. I tried to get the truth and the feeling of the people who lived there. I researched, sitting there in Haberstadt and writing, and I thought ‘Oh, it's summer. Here's summer in my research.’ That was one of the hottest summers there, with babies naked, running around and whatever. So I took the summer and the feeling that everything could start anew. Because in this year, 1990, there was so much potential. Everything was new and everyone had fear, but also potential, so they got this feeling of ‘Yeah, let's do something!’
“I talked to a lot of audiences because I was traveling a lot in Germany, and they all said ‘That was our time.’ They were writing 18 page letters to me, so we somehow got the feeling of the time quite well.”
Recreating products accurately was more complicated, she explains.
“It's always a problem if you do a film, you are not allowed to make product placement. I researched a lot what was sold and who sold what, and then I had to change the Western names a little. The Eastern names didn't have to change because most of the industry in East Germany hasc closed down now.
“For me, it was a lot of fun to film. I love the scene where they transport the parcels down to the children who are carrying them out to the garages. It's such a wonderful time at that time.
“Comedy is always a good way to tell stories like this. I always say if you laugh, it can go even deeper because if you laugh, you open up your heart. And I put the message in always. I don't have a message in this film, but I love to play around with the theme of capitalism and what things are worth. The urge of everyone, I think, to want to be in a tribe. From the very beginning of human beings, the tribe was 30 to 50 people with children and old people, all together like a big family. This is an urge of every human being. And it's intercultural, it's universal. You can have that in Japan also, in Germany or in England, it doesn't matter. We sold the film to Australia and to Canada and Brazil. It has this universal theme of ‘Where do I belong?’”
I tell her that I like the relationship between the three central characters as well, because it's something that tends to be seen as a very modern relationship, but it's obviously always existed, and it creates a lot more space for drama than there would be if they were just a couple.
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| Two To One |
“Yeah,” she says. “I always had this theme about three friends, and they have been in school together and one went to the West before the others and left. I always had that theme as a base. But then the immediate and deep love came while writing. Maybe it’s because I'm female, I don't know. Because I need this emotional bond for me to like films. If it's just a heist movie and they just run around and have fun with the money...” She trails off. “I need also love.”
Unrequited love is her favourite form, dramatically, she explains.
“It's like, oh, you really want it, and you as an audience want it, but it's not working because they're three. That always gives me a heart, you know?” She presses her hand to her chest. “It's like, yeah, I see you love her, but it's not working.”
She has an amazing cast to bring it all to life. How did she get them on board?
“I just asked them,” she says, slightly bashfully. “A good script helped. You know, actually actors have a good nose for good scripts. I've been an actor before, so I know you can ask every actor to join a project and if he feels there's power in it and the role is nice, he will do it because actually, to be honest, there are not so many good scripts around.
“I approach Sandra, because she's a big star in Germany and I think, at the moment, worldwide. I was approaching her the same as I approached every other person there. I just said ‘Hey, I have a project. Don't you want to read the script? I would like you to offer this role.’ And she read it and then we met for a coffee and she said yes. So this was with all these stars. Really, I was a little afraid, as everyone said ‘Yes, I’ll do it.’ It was ten very, very good actors, and me. But I once worked with Jeanne Moreau when I was 16 [in Querelle] and I found out that these really big stars are very normal, very down to earth. They just want to know their lines, and they're very, very open-hearted. And that's what happened there. We shot the film in Gera. It's a little town in East Germany. They all came there and had fun together, these ten very well known actors.”
As a director, Natja has previously worked on quite small sets with small groups of people. Did her acting experience help with directing the big ensemble cast?
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| Two To One |
“Yeah. As an actress I know what an actor needs. Not all directors I think know, but as a former actress I know they need safe space. And some actors need more talking, some actors less talking. That's sometimes a little bit difficult if the one needs more talking, the other one not. But actually they need an embrace. They need to feel safe to open up, you know, because they show their soul. And if you show your soul, you have to be in a safe, safe space.
“The most fun I had on set I think was the day in the tunnel with all the money, because not only the actors who were jumping in the money, but also the team that was standing there – you immediately start to be a young person, standing in a tunnel full of money. And our set designer did a great job. We really printed all the money - 1.3 million notes. I think this was really the funniest moment.”
She has another project in the works, she says, but it will probably take another couple of years to bring to fruition.
“To make cinema is not fast, but I'm doing a comedy again, because I'm very fond of giving people good feelings. I like that they come out of the cinema with a good feeling and then talk, and that's what happened with this film.”
