The Counterfeiters
Stefan Ruzowitzky’s film takes a fairly old-fashioned approach to its complex subject: the enlisting of Jewish prisoners to forge currency during World War II. In exchange for relative comfort and a chance of survival, a workshop of concentration camp inmates sets about aiding the Nazi war effort, flooding the foreign market with fake pounds and dollars. Salomon Sorowitsch (Karl Markovics), a master counterfeiter before the war, participates with apparent willingness, believing you “either adapt or die.” Yet even before his imprisonment, he’s already a closed, guarded man - little more than a cypher, with the odd craving for food or sexual company.
More interesting, if a little camp, is the baby-faced German officer Friedrich Herzog (Devid Striesow). A ripe figure with apple cheeks and a receding hairline, he’s another man who believes in adapting his principles during wartime: after a certain point, he can’t afford the “luxury” of anti-Semiticism or Communism. On the opposing side is Burger (August Diehl), a young anti-Nazi activist who retains a handsome dignity in the face of threats.
No-one could miss the obvious themes of selling out versus survival. There should have been more investigation of the way that portraying Jews as tricky or industrious leads to the breakdown of identity - in particular, Sorowitsch’s willingness to adopt craven mannerisms in response to his captors. Still, the movie maintains its impassive style and is cautious about over-dramatising, resisting the “feel-good” ending of last year’s The Lives of Others.
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3 Responses to “The Counterfeiters”
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I found the film inferior to The Lives of Others. I have two main complaints. First, the story is quite weak, and consequently couldn’t drag me into its premise. Secondly, I found the camera work quite distracting. On the one hand you’ve got this cinema verite look but with highly stylised art production. They didn’t go well together. And there was a lack of subtlety to the styling. There is overly warm colours for the present and the good times, and overly cold colours to the tough times. It didn’t require that degree of contrast, which shows that the director doesn’t trust the audience to ‘get’ it.
I agree that The Lives of Others was a more satisfying film; the images had a chill to them, as opposed to the generic “period” look of The Counterfeiters. But I did find it difficult to tolerate the “Stasi with a heart” theme.
[...] Lesley Chow reviews Stefan Ruzowitzky’s film The Counterfeiters, focused upon a group Jewish prisoners coerced into running a counterfeit currency ring - currently showing as part of the German Film Festival and soon to have a national cinematic release. [...]