German/99 Minutes/Rated R/2007
The Counterfeiters joins a respected list of both Holocaust survivor stories and prison camp anti-heroes. This film took home the 2007 Academy Award for Best Foreign Film as well as several international awards. That aside we've been told this story before, and much better.
The film, based on the book “The Devil's Workshop” puts us inside the largest counterfeiting scam ever documented. During WWII the Nazis wanted to ruin the economies of Britain and the US by flushing them with forged bills. To this end a group of artisans, printers and forgers were brought together in a concentration camp and forced to produce these bills. In return they were given privileges such as soft beds, better food, and (in one strange case) entertainment.
Our lead character is one Salomon “Sally” Sorowitsch the greatest counterfeiter perhaps ever. He lives high and well and is only caught when he falls into lazy dalliance with a client's wife. After he is captured he is sent to a concentration camp where he ingratiates himself with his captors by drawing portraits of them and their families. Eventually he is moved to Sachsenhausen where he is brought in to perfect the counterfeiting of Pounds and Dollars.
Sally is an adapter and prizes himself for his ability to survive. More than once we are treated to sequences that show that Sally is smart and perhaps low on scruples. He doesn't care that his work may lengthen the war and aid the Nazis, he just wants to eat well.
Sally finds his moral counterpoint, nemesis, conscience in Burger an expert printer who is determined to undermine Sally at every turn in the name of some higher cause. He's perfectly happy to sacrifice himself and the others in the project to deny the Nazis their collusion and aid. The battle of wits between Sally and Burger and Sally's machinations attempting to play the Nazis are the central stories here.
Unfortunately, while the film is well made and acted (with a great performance by Karl Markovics as Sally), it feels hollow. We never get the sense of guilt the counterfeiters are supposed to feel at their better position in the camps. In fact, very little of the outside is shown, perhaps a stab at realism, but the drama is the lesser for it. The film is brisk but never builds any real tension. Burger comes across as selfish and self-righteous. The end of Sally's arc feels forced the writer bestowing on him emotions that he has not shown throughout.
The film holds itself out as a story of survival which asks the question “is just surviving enough?” This has been addressed in many better films. One example that kept coming to mind was Lina Wertmuller's “Seven Beauties (1975)” where Giancarlo Giannini plays a pimp who must struggle to survive in a concentration camp and how his decisions reshape him. Also there's the great POW drama "Stalag 17" directed by Billy Wilder, starring William Holden as a Sally type of character. Both are much better than this one.
Ultimately “The Counterfeiters” fails to engage and never really gives us the tension, revelation or pay off it seems to think it gives. Back to film school for these guys. Not Recommended.
Rated R for Some Strong Violence, Brief Sexuality/Nudity and Language
No comments:
Post a Comment