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The Counterfeitors (Stefan Ruzowitzky, 2007) +
Whether I give this film 4/5 or slightly less, it doesn't take away from the fact that I recommend it to all as another side of the Holocaust which people don't really know about. However, there is a survivor, who's still alive, and he wrote the book and served as the consultant for this film which tells a different kind of version of the Nazi concentration camps, even if this character isn't the main character of the film. The Nazis, with the help of some skilled Jewish prisoners, counterfeited more money (especially the British pound) than anyone known ever has, and it was all done out of a concentration camp.
The film certainly shows Nazi atrocities, and it was the survivor Adolf Burger's intention to discount Holocaust deniers when he wrote the book. In the film, Burger is played by August Diehl, and he is worried about his wife who is still in Auschwitz, and he still believes in trying to do anything he can to stop the Nazis' plans of both destroying the British economy by flooding the market with fake pound notes and increasing the chances for the bankrupt Nazis to win the war by perfecting the counterfeit American dollar. This is where the actual lead character of the film plays such an important role. Karl Markovics plays the expert Jewish counterfeiter/criminal/playboy who has made a career pre-WWII by being the best in his trade in central/eastern Europe. However, he's captured before the war by a Munich policeman (Devid Striesow) who later becomes the head of the secret Nazi counterfeiting operation inside the concentration camp at Sachsenhausen.
For anyone who has already been wrung dry by the Holocaust through Night and Fog, The Pawnbroker, Schindler's List and The Pianist, The Counterfeitors still has the power to move you, both emotionally and intellectually. It may be because it looks at the Holocaust from a mostly-different perspective than most such films, and therefore it's very psychologically-complex. It presents the idea that the Jews who are working for the Nazis are basically collaborators and therefore provided with food and comforts which no other Jews in the concentration camp system were ever given. It also tries to humanize the man who many initially see as a bad man because he's a habitual criminal and seems to be really chummy with the Nazi who decides which of them lives and which dies. Yet this expert counterfeiter also seems to concern himself with the survival of his fellow prisoners more than anyone else there, and he also fights against Burger because he fears that Burger's principles will get them all killed. Then it presents a Nazi man of power as a family man who decries the fact that he, himself, is even a Nazi.
Then again, maybe this film is just powerful because anytime you see somebody dehumanize somebody else and treat them as less than they see themself as, and then they proceed to treat them as animals and kill them on whims, it just gets your humanity (latent or otherwise) into such a frenzy that it either makes you want to go to the streets to do something against the practice, makes you want to cry, or makes you feel glad that you live in a land where such a thing just couldn't possibly happen. With our current political season upon us here in the Good Ol' U.S.A., I hope that all of us remember that we are brothers and sisters, whether we are fortunate enough to live here or just share this world, which, after all, is more important than one single nation or concept. I look forward to a time where conflict, strife, torture and murder are long gone just because of race, creed, color, religion, intolerance or political party. I'm sure everyone here agrees too.
Whether I give this film 4/5 or slightly less, it doesn't take away from the fact that I recommend it to all as another side of the Holocaust which people don't really know about. However, there is a survivor, who's still alive, and he wrote the book and served as the consultant for this film which tells a different kind of version of the Nazi concentration camps, even if this character isn't the main character of the film. The Nazis, with the help of some skilled Jewish prisoners, counterfeited more money (especially the British pound) than anyone known ever has, and it was all done out of a concentration camp.
The film certainly shows Nazi atrocities, and it was the survivor Adolf Burger's intention to discount Holocaust deniers when he wrote the book. In the film, Burger is played by August Diehl, and he is worried about his wife who is still in Auschwitz, and he still believes in trying to do anything he can to stop the Nazis' plans of both destroying the British economy by flooding the market with fake pound notes and increasing the chances for the bankrupt Nazis to win the war by perfecting the counterfeit American dollar. This is where the actual lead character of the film plays such an important role. Karl Markovics plays the expert Jewish counterfeiter/criminal/playboy who has made a career pre-WWII by being the best in his trade in central/eastern Europe. However, he's captured before the war by a Munich policeman (Devid Striesow) who later becomes the head of the secret Nazi counterfeiting operation inside the concentration camp at Sachsenhausen.
For anyone who has already been wrung dry by the Holocaust through Night and Fog, The Pawnbroker, Schindler's List and The Pianist, The Counterfeitors still has the power to move you, both emotionally and intellectually. It may be because it looks at the Holocaust from a mostly-different perspective than most such films, and therefore it's very psychologically-complex. It presents the idea that the Jews who are working for the Nazis are basically collaborators and therefore provided with food and comforts which no other Jews in the concentration camp system were ever given. It also tries to humanize the man who many initially see as a bad man because he's a habitual criminal and seems to be really chummy with the Nazi who decides which of them lives and which dies. Yet this expert counterfeiter also seems to concern himself with the survival of his fellow prisoners more than anyone else there, and he also fights against Burger because he fears that Burger's principles will get them all killed. Then it presents a Nazi man of power as a family man who decries the fact that he, himself, is even a Nazi.
Then again, maybe this film is just powerful because anytime you see somebody dehumanize somebody else and treat them as less than they see themself as, and then they proceed to treat them as animals and kill them on whims, it just gets your humanity (latent or otherwise) into such a frenzy that it either makes you want to go to the streets to do something against the practice, makes you want to cry, or makes you feel glad that you live in a land where such a thing just couldn't possibly happen. With our current political season upon us here in the Good Ol' U.S.A., I hope that all of us remember that we are brothers and sisters, whether we are fortunate enough to live here or just share this world, which, after all, is more important than one single nation or concept. I look forward to a time where conflict, strife, torture and murder are long gone just because of race, creed, color, religion, intolerance or political party. I'm sure everyone here agrees too.