Two to One is a heist comedy that tells the story of a group of people during the Cold War in 1990 East Germany days before the reunification. We watch as they stumble upon a storage unit that holds an insanely large amount of ostmarks, which funnily enough, is soon to be completely worthless in a few days time. So in a last ditch effort to make the ostmarks worth any monetary value, they come up with a divisive plan to buy goods, and sell them in West Germany in exchange for deutschmarks – at a two to one rate.
Maren (Sandra Hüller) and Robert (Max Riemelt), play a doting married couple with two children in the film, whose relationship is somewhat threatened at the return of Volker (Ronald Zehrfeld), a childhood friend of theirs who may or may not have been mixed up in their family affairs.
While this relationship drama happens in the background, after they’ve successfully stolen the money, these people convincingly get the rest of the community building involved in the scheme, including children, pushing the narrative of the desperate nature of the time.
A movie that could have held so much substance and grit, particularly speaking to this historical economic hardship, unfortunately fell short.
It was too easy to get lost in the motives of the characters in the film; where the story jumped between a potential polyamorous relationship, greed, and the willingness to do whatever they could to take advantage of their situation, then suddenly shifting gears and using the money to save a community building for the benefit of the people (which felt thrown in purely to keep the story going). The historical significance of the community and the communist society they were living in, unfortunately was lazily placed in the background of the story with spray painted anti-unification from Maren and Robert’s eldest son Jannick (Anselm Haderer), and a quick quip about the Berlin Wall.
While Sandra Hüller, Max Riemelt, and Ronald Zehrfeld delivered a strong and honest performance on screen, the characters they played felt astray. Little development of the characters, paired with the jumping subplots, led to the lack of any sort of investment in their characters and what they were going through. And the satirical nature felt lost in the full plot of the film.
There is no doubt that there were beautiful aspects of the film, in its cinematography and the set design emulating the feeling of East Germany in the 1990s, but all in all, the overall story falls flat. Particularly with a lot of plot points seemingly brushed under the rug or lazily explained – like Maren’s initial desire to leave Halberstadt and explore the world, to her suddenly doing a 180 and saying that the city is perfect for them and she was happy; Didi actually being Volker’s daughter with no conflict resolution between the trio other than a comment about the three of them being “together” the way they were; and the anxiety of the vault heist resulting in them just walking away scot free – it felt incomplete.
And if you aren’t too well versed in the history of the Cold War, it’s also inevitable to get lost completely in the plot.
The opportunity to build a satirical comedy based on true events became lost in a crowded narrative. With the overwhelming and unnecessary need to place the many different subplots in the one film creating an unclear story that dragged on for longer than it should have. And while still enjoyable, I was left feeling dissatisfied.
The film is showing at select cinemas across Australia during the HSBC German Film Festival.
