Film: The Counterfeiters
Release date: 17th March 2008
Certificate: 15
Running time: 98 mins
Director: Stefan Ruzowitzky
Starring: Karl Markovics, August Diehl, Devid Striesow, Martin Brambach, August Zirner
Genre: Crime/Drama/War
Studio: Metrodome
Format: DVD
Country: Austria
Holocaust films are a tricky business. For the most part they’re produced with the dual goal of accurately depicting the Nazi’s systematic methods of reducing humans to beasts while honouring and remembering the millions of Jews who suffered, and died, at Hitler’s decree. At the same time, filmmakers don’t want to be too graphic because, with all honesty, no one with today’s Western sensibilities could sit through the truth. So it becomes hard; how to make a film about the Holocaust without glorifying it, but at the same time without trivializing it? In short, how does one tell the truth?
Austrian filmmaker Stefan Ruzowitzky found the answer, and the result is the 2008 Oscar winner The Counterfeiters, a film that tells the spectacular true story of Operation Bernhard; the greatest counterfeit operation in history.
At the start of the film, the audience is taken through flashback to 1936 Berlin and the arrest of Salomon “Sally” Sorowitsch (Markovics), the renowned king of counterfeiters. Sorowitsch is a Russian Jew who is funding his extravagant life of gambling and women with money of his own production when a gloating Nazi by the name of Superintendent Herzog (Striesow) has him sent to prison.
Three years later, the war has broken out, and Sally is transferred to Mauthausen concentration camp. There, in a desperate effort to save his life, he weasels his way out of physical labour by offering his artistic services to the guards.
Sorowitsch survives day by day for the next five years through exchanging his skills as a painter and portraitist for extra food rations. His thoughts are for his own survival and he works to secure himself only the chance to see tomorrow.
The story moves forward with Sorowitch’s deportment to Sachsenhausen in 1944, where he comes face to face once again with Herzog, now a member of the Nazi elite. This time, rather than extinguish Sorowitch’s prodigious counterfeiting skills, Herzog intends to put them to use in the name of the Nazi party. Along with a select number of other prisoners, all who had held professional careers as printers, designers, artists or in some cases simple craftsmen, Sally is welcomed with insincere smiles before being set to work fabricating false passports and currency for the bankrupt Nazi party. Most importantly his objective is to perfect the pound and then – the ultimate goal – the dollar…
The principle focus of the film is the moral dilemma faced by the prisoners involved in Operation Bernhard. They are the star prize of the concentration camp, rewarded with soft beds, adequate food, even a ping-pong table! But as time goes by, it becomes increasingly challenging for the men to accept their luxurious lifestyle knowing how the rest of the camp is run, knowing their kin are starving and being beaten to death on the other side of the wall, and, most importantly, knowing their work will bring about the destruction of the Allies’ economies and fund the Nazi effort. Soon they are each wrestling with the question, how important is individual survival when compared with moral responsibility?
Ruzowitzky tackles the question with skill. The entire film is paced so each character’s psychological degeneration is given attention, and the audience is shown each of their breaking points - the point where they must question what survival is worth. Some give up on survival; others will stay alive at any cost. Some men are selfish. Sorowitch, in particular, will willingly help fund the Nazi war effort in order to save his own life. By contrast, the young Adolf Burger (Diehl) deliberately sabotages the production of counterfeit currency on a matter of principle, believing even if the whole team is killed as a result of his actions, they will have died for a good cause. These two men are the two extremes, but the moral restlessness of each of the counterfeiters is examined, and what makes Ruzowitzky’s film so truthful and therefore so powerful is that it tells the story in a completely objective way. One man’s belief is never shown as right or wrong; there is no ‘good guy’ or ‘bad guy’, there are only individual struggles.
Furthermore, Ruzowitzky excels in creating an honest representation of the Holocaust by focusing his film on the psychological undoing of the counterfeiters and not trying to portray life in the concentration camps as a whole. He doesn’t ignore life as an ordinary labouring prisoner; all the elements commonly associated with concentration camps are there: emaciated men, broken in body and spirit, inhaling their meagre meals and staring greedily at those who haven’t eaten as quickly - men literally killing themselves through physical labour. References are made to the gas chambers and to Auschwitz. Ruzowitzky doesn’t shy away from addressing the horrors of the camps, but he makes sure to depict that side of camp as a contrast to the counterfeiter’s lives. One of the most memorable scenes is near the end of the film, when the wall separating the Operation Bernhard team from the ordinary inmates is broken down and the audience sees the stark contrast between the reasonably well-fed and clean counterfeiting team and the savage, half-crazed looking prisoners. But for the most part, the atrocities of the camp occur off camera, which places the viewer inside the counterfeiter’s barracks, making the entire film more vivid.
Truth resonates through the film in Ruzowitzky’s use of colour: grey tones set the mood of the concentration camp and help communicate the despair felt by the men who are nothing now but shadows of ghosts. But the principle kudos of the film, of creating as real a representation of Sachsenhausen as possible, must be given to the actors. The way they held themselves, at times standing tall, eyes blazing with fury, at others hunched over, eyes vacant, was a natural physical parallel to their mental see-saw between the urge to fight back and overpowering listlessness. Markovics captured the intelligence, compassion and furious survival instinct of Sorowitch perfectly, and Diehl embodied the idealistic spirit and passion of Burger with such conviction that both characters earned the sympathy of the viewer, though neither believed in the same course of action.
The Counterfeiters rings true from start to finish. Not one line of dialogue is wasted. Each uttering, every sigh, and every outburst contributes to creating an environment where people with different ideals are forced to work together on pain of death. It is more than just another Holocaust film; it’s an examination of the moral ambiguities of life, and of the course human nature will take when faced with the difficult decision of choosing to live while others die or to dying yourself. HA
