Gone are the days of mea culpa, when Germans responding to Daniel Goldhagen's indictment in his 1996 book, “Hitler's Willing Executioners,” openly discussed their shameful participation in the Holocaust as a way of expiating their guilt. Stefan Ruzowitzy, director of “The Counterfeiters,” the Austrian selection for Best Foreign Film Oscar and one of the five nominees, said at a recent dinner hosted by Elie Wiesel and Sony Picture Classics, the film is not doing well in either his native country or in Germany. In German speaking lands, the pervasive, “enough already,” “been there, done that,” overrides interest in this thrilling story set in the concentration camps of Mathausen and Sachsenhausen. Taken prisoner by the Nazis, a Jewish counterfeiter, Salomon Sorowitsch (Karl Markovics), is forced to lead a team of prisoners in first forging the British pound and then the dollar in the attempt to destroy the Allies' economy while fattening the Third Reich's coffers. Ruzowitzy's tight, fast-paced script is based upon the book, “The Devil's Workshop,” by Adolf Burger, himself an accomplice to Operation Bernhard, as this historic incident is called, played deftly by August Diehl. “Sally,” the talented forger is a rogue by any measure and one great attribute of this film is that it does not sentimentalize Holocaust events or the untoward Jewish experience. The German officers taunt, humiliate, and murder their prisoners for stooping to the most immoral activity to survive. And the Jews are portrayed realistically, that is, while moments of compassion do occur, they also betray one another and rise to levels of unspeakable behavior as needed to live yet one more day. As played by Markovics, a well-known Austrian theater actor, Sally has a facial twitch and elastic body. His spirited tango dance underscores his dream of residing in Argentina, where the real-life Sorowitsch ended up after the war, but not before going to Monte Carlo with a suitcase of notes to be lost at the gambling tables. There, in this film's fiction, he hooks up with Dolores Chaplin, yes, another of Charlie's granddaughters. Realizing that the success of his movie would depend upon attention to detail, Ruzowitzy searched museums for authentic period printing presses, only to find them down the street from where they were filming. The actual printer was hired as an extra and taught the actors how to use the vintage machinery. It is safe to predict that this fine film will follow last year's German language “The Lives of Others” to Oscar glory. But even if it doesn't, do not miss it.
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Posted by: thomas charm | March 09, 2011 at 08:57 AM