One of the biggest, little known tales of the Holocaust comes alive in The Counterfeiters, the 2008 recipient of the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language film. Made in Austria, The Counterfeiters adds a new angle to the tale of the worst mass murder in history and tells it with a thick veil of grey. It’s not so much a question of who the villains really were, but more a matter of action – it asks you: what would you do in this situation? Because certainly the Holocaust was horrible for millions of people, but what was the responsibility of those that had it a little better off?
Austrian actor Karl Markovics plays Salomon Sorowitsch, a Jewish counterfeiter living in Berlin in 1936. He gets caught by the police while trying to complete his “masterpiece,” a perfect copy of the American dollar. Naturally, because this is Nazi Germany, he ends up in a concentration camp, eventually finding his way to a group of highly-skilled prisoners participating in Operation: Berhard. The year is 1945, and the Germans, while near defeat, are also financially bankrupt. Berhard is a large-scale plan to flood the British and American economies with funny money. It’s just the sort of job for a master counterfeiter.
Based on a true story and a book by one of the survivors of the counterfeiting operation, the film reinforces the spirit of moral ambiguity and conflict inherent in a lot of recent war movies. Salomon is not at all likeable despite the fact that his plight is really sympathetic. Throughout the movie there’s an undercurrent of doubt; this isn’t Naked Amongst Wolves, where inmates band together in an act of defiance. Salomon is a man of practicality and a man that believes in the virtue of adapting to suit the circumstances. His arguments do pose and interesting conundrum to the audience, the counterfeiters get comforts considered extravagant as compared to other inmates, what point would rebellion serve?
Writer/director Stefan Ruzowitzky makes some interesting choices in the way he’s shot the film. The one thing you immediately notice is his use of steady cam in creating a visceral, documentary feel to the production. Indeed it does seem as if Ruzowitzky was out to create an accurate approximation of reality and he also doesn’t shy away from the human face of the story. I don’t think Salomon is all that changed from the events of the movie although he does show signs that he was probably more deeply affected than he thought he going to be. Ruzowitzky also does an admirable job humanizing Salomon’s Nazi Commander Friedrich Herzog, played with a degree of charm and humility by Devid Striesow.
Instantly compelling and debatable, The Counterfeiters is both intelligent and entertaining, thanks to a dual anchor of compelling direction and compelling acting. It leaves some questions open in the end, and more importantly than taking that bold step, it believes that the viewer is smart enough to make their own moral judgments from the facts as presented. This is a rare cinematic treat as well as being food for thought.
