one of these men is trapped in a concentration camp. The other three are drawings. Can you tell which one is which?
Succeeding The Lives of Others in the best foreign language film category at the Oscars this year, The Counterfeiters is yet another shining example of soberly paced, character-driven German storytelling, and further proof of a North American obsession with the holocaust. There seems to be a prevailing ideology in modern filmmaking that supposes any film set during a known atrocity will be an award magnet, and the Academy often proves this right. In recent years especially, otherwise mediocre films like The Last King of Scotland and Blood Diamond have been able to win a statue or two simply by virtue of their exploitative content. Just because a film is able to effectively pull at our North American guilt strings doesn't necessarily make it a good film, and this applies doubly to the foreign language category, whose films can sometimes be accused of pandering to exactly this sensibility. What elevates The Counterfeiters from a merely above-average plight-of-the-Jews holocaust film to a truly excellent plight-of-the-Jews holocaust film, then, is the fact that its context is incidental to its appeal.
In a paradoxically refreshing change of pace for atrocity films, the setting of The Counterfeiters is exactly what it should be: A backdrop to the struggles of its characters. While the holocaust may provide the impetus for certain events, and the Nazis are the perfunctory bad guys, the one Jewish prisoner who thinks himself a moral exemplar is portrayed as something of a heel for the majority of the film, and even an antagonist in one subplot. This is a particularly daring move on behalf of writer-director Stefan Ruzowitsky, as it's this character, Adolf Burger, on whose memoirs the film is based. That's right — not only does The Counterfeiters reject the easy Speilbergian tack, but it does so in knowing confrontation with its source material. And that's why it's great.
The story proper follows Salomon “Sally” Sorowitsch, a master counterfeiter who is captured in 1936 when he passes a less-than-perfect American dollar, and finds himself in a concentration camp shortly thereafter. He quickly makes a calculated move to impress the guards with his artistic skills, and begins painting portraits of them with their families, securing regular food, drink and certain luxuries for himself. After gaining some renown, he's transfered to the Sachenhausen camp, where he's employed in Operation Bernhard — to date, still the largest ever currency-forging operation.
As a weapon of economic warfare, Operation Bernhard had a mandate to produce vast amounts of English and American currency with which to flood their respective markets. Sorowitsch, the opportunist, sees it as a way to survive the concentration camps in relative comfort and also stroke his sizable ego by finally forging the perfect American dollar. An anti-hero to rival Rick Blaine, Sorowitcsh's personality is almost always the driving force behind the action—the fact that thousands of people are being killed metres away is, for the most part, unimportant.
Though Sorowitsch's charisma is the foundation of the story, Ruzowitzky never lets us forget about the setting, either. Brutality abounds, but it's always used as a means — never an end. The camp provides the backdrop and no small amount of tension, but the implementation of Second World War-related plot devices is always extremely well-calculated and, therefore, extremely effective. For example, the scene in which the relatively pampered counterfeiters are mistaken for SS soldiers by a group of gun-toting workaday inmates is far more powerful and complex than any of the images of wanton slaughter the academy is so fond of rewarding.
The Counterfeiters is so close to perfect that any criticism levelled against it would be superficial. Beautiful, terrifying and memorable, The Counterfeiters is an atrocity film that unconditionally deserves the Academy’s recognition.
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