Sunday, April 06, 2008
A+E, Movies, Reviews
Counterfeiters
Oscar-winning ‘Counterfeiters’ feels (mostly) authentic
CREDIT: Jat Jurgen Olczyk © Beta Film GmbH, Courtesy Sony Pictures Classics
Karl Markovics in “The Counterfeiters”
“THE COUNTERFEITERS”
Karl Markovics, August Diehl
Directed by Stefan Ruzowitzky
Rated R
Landmark Midtown Art Cinema
It’s a generalization, but common wisdom holds that Oscar-nominated movies dealing with WWII and the Holocaust are likely to snag the awards. (“Life Is Beautiful,” anyone?) “The Counterfeiters” fits that pattern, winning the trophy for Best Foreign Language Film in a year when stronger movies (Romania’s “4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days” and Spain’s “The Orphanage”) didn’t even make Oscar voters’ shortlist.
“The Counterfeiters” is the sturdily crafted, fact-based tale of a group of concentration camp prisoners assigned by their Nazi captors to manufacture fake British and U.S. currency. The plan? To flood the market with the funny money, destroying the Allied economy.
Shovel-faced and inscrutable, Karl Markovics plays Salomon, the crown prince of forgery. Working for the sometimes friendly, sometimes vicious Commandant Herzog (Devid Striesow), Salomon tries to keep himself and his colleagues alive as long as possible, slowly refining the dubious moolah. More than the Nazis, his main adversary turns out to be fellow prisoner Burger (August Diehl), an idealist who urges the others not to collaborate with their captors.
Partly shot with hand-held cameras that lend the story a sweaty, cramped immediacy, “Counterfeiters” raises fascinating moral questions. And the pampered forgery team’s confrontation, at war’s end, with skeletal survivors from the rest of the camp packs real emotional punch. Still, the film sometimes feels like something you’ve seen before. Or may see again in a few years, freshly kissed by Oscar. 2.5 STARS—Steve Murray