Review of The Counterfeiters (2007) by Paul Z — 14 Nov 2008

The Counterfeiters, a true story of a concentration camp ordeal based on an autobiographical account, conceives a disquieting moral predicament any one of us could identify with, one not quite like any of the series of great, good and bad Holocaust films to date. Namely, to what degree would you fundamentally rework your life, disregard authority and take the risk of individual harm, if you knew the life, work and wealth you help breed and manufacture is triggering misery or death to others?

The man who dispensed the autobiography that spawned this Austrian film adaptation, Adolf Burger, plays a part demotes from center stage to a fellow Jewish inmate at Sachsenhausen. Masking profound warmth and a wealth of emotional wounds behind a superior cynicism is the cold and impenetrable Karl Markovics is Salomon, an infamous master counterfeiter and connoisseur in 1930s Berlin. Finally caught by the local police inspector, played by the conquering spirit of David Striesow, who is mysteriously awed by his illegitimate feats, he is then hurled off to a concentration camp. There he again meets the inspector, who is now the commanding officer at the camp, oblivious that the rather benevolent but underhanded Nazi has been devising a conspiracy involving the prisoner.

Exclusive for his rare expertise, Salomon and a selection of specialists are coerced to generate counterfeit foreign currency. The group, which includes Burger, played by stern and driven August Diehl, is granted luxury barracks for their work. But while Salomon runs the operation, which is designed to undermine the economy of Germany's united adversaries, Adolf passionately declines to toil for Nazi profit and wants to do something to stop the operation's service to the Nazi war effort.

What follows is a frenzied symbolic conflict between these two men, a criminal and a communist, loaded with coated philosophical and dogmatic scope. And, as it sets in opposition the compulsion for individual survival in spite of one's disgrace, against more dignified but death-defying impulses of rebelliousness, united revolution and latent martyrdom, the urges that push history and civilization along, but at massive sacrifice.

I don't mean to paint a picture of an acutely intricate psychological drama, because the charm of The Counterfeiters is that it is essentially designed as a suspense thriller. It is a suspenseful drama that, when it arrives at and begins to focus on the moral dilemma between the two leads, is not exclusively about the horrors of the Holocaust like, say, Schindler's List, Life Is Beautiful or The Pianist. It is a true story that happened in that horrific context, which intensifies the drama and gives it a very gritty and likely atmosphere.

My only wish is that it did not begin with Markovics's character of Salomon after the end of WWII, checking into an expensive French hotel and paying with cash, profitably gambling in a casino, and attracting the attention of an attractive French woman who later sees the tattooed numerals on his arm. Can we stop using this narrative device already? This film would have been much better had it begun in 1930s Berlin with Salomon forging money and passports. Let us be unclear of what happens to him until the story takes us to such events. Let us be unsure of whether or not he survives. The film sacrifices a great deal of suspense and intrigue by using this stale device.

There were other foreign films of the magnificent year at the movies that was 2007 that might have been more deserving of the Oscar for Best Foreign Film, but let us not project that surprise upon seeing it and let it affect how positively or negatively we view the film. The Counterfeiters is a very entertaining and suspenseful film. Director Stefan Ruzowitzky is apparently not an A-list filmmaker, or anywhere near the art-house, having evidently made risky but campy debacles, but here, also having adapted Burger's book himself, is dryly confident enough in his vision that we are not put through the satiated visual terror of life in the concentration camps but we sense the ambiance of that terror nonetheless.