Think “The Pianist” meets “Downfall”…
Stefan Ruzowitzky’s “The Counterfeiters” tells the quietly rebellious true story of more than a dozen WWII prisoners who escaped the terror of concentrations camps because of their unique skill… making money.
A number of printers and artists, led by the legendary forger, Salomon Sorowitsch (Karl Markovics), are detained by the Nazis in a special section of camp. Each of them assigned a particular task in the mass forgery of British Pounds and American Dollars. The plan was to destroy the economic stability of the opposition by flooding the market with hundreds of millions of bank notes, therefore devaluing the currency.
The film is appropriately bleak in its depiction of Sorowitsch’s desperate survival. He lives one day at a time. Consider the scene where he willing admits that he would rather die a horrific death by gas tomorrow than take a quick bullet today. Everything he does, he does to make it another night.
I liked the way the film transposes from the frivolity of Sorowitsch’s free-spending life before his arrest, to the minimalist struggle for any morsel of food once imprisoned. Without giving anything away, the film arrives full circle in a poignant and unexpected way when the war ends.
The film plays with the controversial notions of individual survival versus the greater good. Some of the prisoners have grave misgivings about financing the stumbling and virtually bankrupt Nazi regime. They even sabotage their own work to slow the production of Dollars. However, at what point do they act on the threats to their own survival and actually create a foolproof forgery?
Karl Markovics is reminiscent of Adrian Brody in his Oscar winning performance from “The Pianist”. His emaciated features and sullen expression of determined despair is riveting. Were this film to receive similar exposure to Polanski’s effort, he would assuredly be considered for the Academy Awards. Unfortunately, it won’t quite get that level of recognition in the US because too many are allergic to subtitles.
“The Counterfeiters” is a cold and stark reminder that people revert to any means in order to survive — and yet, somehow, the desire to do the right thing never leaves, even under the most extreme circumstances. I am not sure whether the film achieves greatness… it feels a little truncated at only 98 minutes. The true story absolutely merits more screen time. Nevertheless, this is a movie that people should seek out on DVD after the megaplex theater chains pass it up in favor of something less “thinkified”.
