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Directed By
Stefan Ruzowitzky
Written By:
Stefan Ruzowitzky, Adolf Burger
Cast:
Karl Markovics, August Diehl, August Zirner, Werner Daehn, Devid Striesow, Martin Brambach, Sebastian Urzendowsky, Andreas Haslinger, Andreas Schmidt, Marie Bäumer, Arndt Schwering-Sohnrey, Dolores Chaplin, Andreas Haslinger, Dieter Hilpmann, Daniel Klisa, Erik Jan Rippmann, Veit Stübner, Tilo Prückner, Lenn Kudrjawizki, Tim Breyvogel
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The Counterfeiters (Fälscher, Die) (2007)
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Movie Review by Jarrod
February 27th, 2008
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I happened to see 'The Counterfeiters' two days before it won Best Foreign Film; maybe it deserved it, but then it was the only one of the nominees that was actually playing within a reasonable distance to my new home. It is a powerful and absorbing historical drama, a Holocaust tale of sorts, but it competed with Katyn, the film from the great Polish director Andrzej Wajda, about one of the many atrocities that befell his nation during WWII. 'The Counterfeiters' hails from Austria. Director Stefan Ruzowitsky made it apparently to atone for the fact that some of his relatives were Nazi sympathizers and welcomed Hitler into Vienna with open arms, something that they probably now regret. I have studied nearly every aspect of WWII and the Holocaust, but here is a story that I am not that familiar with. Operation Bernhard was the Nazi campaign to manufacture identical copies of foreign currency, notably the pound, which they then planned to use to disrupt the British economy, which would in turn affect the British war effort. This never quite got off the ground, but it was certainly ambitious, and its most notorious quality was that it involved many Jewish collaborators, particularly from the Sachsenhausen concentration camp. The main character here is Salomon "Sally" Sorowitsch (Karl Markovics), a Russian Jew who happens to be one of the world's best counterfeiters.
He works in Berlin, and is arrested by a policeman named Herzog (Devid Striesow). He ends up in a camp where he becomes a portrait artist, but is later recognized by Herzog (now a Nazi officer), who recruits him into Operation Bernhard. Sally thus works for his captors in exchange for special privileges, including better living conditions, more food, and, most importantly, a longer lifespan. The moral dilemma he faces is understandable and unenviable; other Jews around him are dying and being murdered and he may very well be seen as a traitor and a coward for his actions. But, what exactly would you do in such a situation? This movie and Tim Blake Nelson's The Grey Zone attempt to answer that question, and perhaps many others. This film is based on the experiences and recollections of Adolf Burger (August Diehl), one of Sally's fellow prisoners, who strongly disapproves of what Sally is doing, and believes it is better to resist than collaborate.
The issue of Jewish collaboration with the Nazis is inevitably contentious, but one might also notice that British POWs in Japanese camps often betrayed one another for the sake of survival; officers would even go so far as to inform Japanese authorities if they heard about escape plans among the ranks of lower-level soldiers. 'The Counterfeiters' is more or less all about Sally and not so much about Burger, but Sally is a consistently interesting character, and Markovics gives a great performance. Sally is not particularly virtuous, and engages in a lot of unethical, illegal activities, and is very much a criminal, but, with the Nazis, he is a criminal in the service of criminals. That he is conflicted about the work he does for the Nazis is perhaps to be expected, but it is the kind of work he did prior to the war, with hardly any compunction at all. The movie covers Operation Bernhard with as much detail as it probably could (or should), and there is not a lot of hope or optimism to be found in the ending, though Burger and Sally both survived the war (Burger is still alive).
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