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Movies Forum Index » Movie Reviews Forum » Review: The Counterfeiters (2007)
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| Mark R. Leeper |
 Posted: Tue Apr 29, 2008 4:54 pm |
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THE COUNTERFEITERS
(a film review by Mark R. Leeper)
CAPSULE: The Austrian-German production THE
COUNTERFEITERS is good cinema that deals with
serious moral issues. It is about the ethical
question of concentration camp prisoners
prolonging their lives by helping the Nazi war
effort. The issue is at what cost is survival.
Writer/director Stefan Ruzowitzky does not give
a pat and easy answer. Rating: high +2 (-4 to +4)
or 8/10
Based on a true incident, THE COUNTERFEITERS tells a story that
is roughly parallel to SCHINDLER'S LIST, but makes its central
theme a moral issue that was entirely side-stepped by the
Spielberg film. The story involves concentration camp inmates
who survive by allowing the Nazis to use their talents to further
the German war effort. Of course, many prisoners were in the
position from the Jewish Sonderkomandos to the slave laborers who
assembled the V-2 rockets at Mittelbau-Dora Concentration Camp to
many different types of slave laborers in the camps. Nearly
everybody who was not murdered was put to use in some way for
their Nazi captors. Is this work acceptable in the name of self-
preservation? Does it become less acceptable if the work being
done actually makes a strategic difference in the war? In
SCHINDLER'S LIST workers were making enamel cookware for the
army. It did not make a big contribution to the Nazi war effort,
but it made a difference. In THE COUNTERFEITERS the work being
done could easily destabilize the economies of Britain and the
United States.
Stefan Ruzowitzky's film focuses on Salomon "Sally" Sorowitsch
(played by Karl Markovics) a counterfeiter who is living a high
life in Berlin of the early 1930s. Then he is captured by police
Superintendent Friedrich Herzog (Devid Striesow). Herzog does
not hide his admiration for Sally whom he admits he considers the
best counterfeiter in the world. In time not dramatized in the
film Sally goes to prison. When the political situation becomes
worse he is moved to Mauthausen concentration camp. There Sally
is able to trade his talent as a graphic artist in return for
some modest mouthfuls of food, and hence is able to stay alive.
Suddenly he is transferred to Sachsenhausen camp. Expecting the
worst he finds instead that he has been hand-picked by Friedrich
Herzog. Herzog is heading a project to destabilize the economies
of enemy countries. He is using his knowledge of counterfeiting
to run Operation Bernhard, an operation within the camp to print
up millions of counterfeit pounds and dollars. They will be put
into circulation intended to ruin the economies of the United
States and Britain. Not incidentally the money is also needed to
buy petroleum and other resources that the Third Reich is running
short on.
Within the camp Herzog has a whole printing shop staffed with
dozens of prisoners working on creating undetectable forgeries of
foreign money. Herzog's admiration for Sally's skills prompts
him bring in the master forger to manage his shop. Just a few
feet away people in the thousands are being murdered and the
staff of this shop is living in conditions perhaps not
comfortable, but easily survivable.
Not everybody in the shop feels that this sort of survival is
worth having knowing that it is supporting the Third Reich and
helping them to continue their factory murder practices.
Counterfeiters are playing ping-pong in their off-hours where
murders are taking place right outside the windows. Adolf Burger
(August Diehl) is Sally's press operator who wants to sabotage
the project, even if it will bring the Nazis down on the whole
shop of workers. Sally has to decide between protecting the
workers who are depending on him for their safety or sacrificing
them all to stop the Nazi plan. For a man who is basically a
ruthless criminal, he is in an unfamiliar position making serious
moral decisions.
The film's grim visual style complements the subject matter. The
colors are washed out in the camp scenes to give an atmosphere as
downbeat as could be created in monochrome. As Sally, Karl
Markovics shows little emotion. He coldly calculates and plans
to do what he can to do good without doing bad in the process.
Films about moral issues are not uncommon. Films that leave the
questions open are considerably rarer. This film trusts the
viewer to make his own moral judgements as well as dramatizing a
nearly forgotten chapter of history. I rate it a high +2 on the
-4 to +4 scale or 8/10.
Film Credits: <http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0813547/>
For more information on Operation Bernhard, see
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Bernhard> and
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolf_Burger>.
Mark R. Leeper
mleeper@optonline.net
Copyright 2008 Mark R. Leeper |
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