Paper #4

                                                The Counterfeiters Movie Review

Even though disappointed to be tricked into watching this movie because the title, it was actually one of the rare foreign films that can be watched by people all over the world.  The movie is not about a bank robbery or any robbery for that matter, but about the Nazis? Also, on top of all that, it is foreign?  As boring as one might think this movie will turn out to be, it is not.  It is not like the history movies that are being watched in middle or high school, but one heck of a way to show the Nazis’ plan to try and flood England’s economy.  Yes, it had to do with money and not, not entirely at least, the holocaust. This movie asks the questions of whether it is morally wrong to exchange services that help the Nazis in return for a less cruel life or not.  

The Counterfeiters is a 2007 film written and directed by Stefan Ruzowitzky.  It tells the true story of the greatest counterfeiting operation in history, Operation Bernhard.  Operation Bernhard was a secret operation by the Nazis during World War II to try and flood the British and American economies with fake cash.  The film was based on the memoirs of a Jewish concentration camp survivor Adolf Burger.  The Counterfeiters received high praise from film critics, winning an Academy Award for best foreign language film and the 2007 Best Foreign Language Film Oscar. The major theme of the film that will be focused on throughout this review is the notion that the value of Salomon’s labor to the Nazi’s is the sole reason for his survival.

Salomon Sorowitsch, the counterfeiter, is caught by the police and first imprisoned in a hard labor camp and then in a concentration camp near Linz. In an effort to secure himself protection and some comforts at the camp, he turns his forging skills to painting portraits, which then attracts the attention of the guards, who make him paint them and their families in exchange for extra food. 

His talents bring him to wider attention, and he is transferred out of the concentration camp and brought in front of the police officer who arrested him in Berlin.   He finds himself put together with other prisoners with artistic or printing talents, and begins working in a special section of the concentration camp which is devoted to forgery. The counterfeiters are kept in relatively humane conditions, with comfortable bunks, a washroom and adequate food, although they are subjected to brutality and insults at the hands of the prison guards. 

While some of the prisoners are content to work for the Nazis to avoid the extermination camps, others see their efforts as supporting the German war effort.  The reward for their labors is clean bed linen, running water, decent food and, most importantly, the privilege of not being exposed to life "out there". Should they fail in their task, however, the gas chambers await. Sorowitsch tries to blank out the sounds coming from the other side of the wall – the everyday routines of shooting and torture – and most of the time succeeds. "One adapts or dies," he tells a fellow prisoner.  Yet even Sorowitsch cannot remain blind forever to the devil's pact the counterfeiters have entered: he knows by their skills they are helping to prop up the Reich's bankrupt economy and prolong the Nazi war effort. And what if Germany is victorious? It is all too likely that the counterfeiters will be killed like other Jews once their usefulness is at an end.

While watching this movie and writing this paper, the only thing that kept popping in my head is the time the prophets and messengers were sent to their people to preach to them about God and people would not listen.  After a while the people told them that if it is wealth and power that they are seeking then they will give it to them.  Knowing what waited them after their death is a far greater reward than what the leaders of the town are offering, they kept on preaching to believe in God alone and not associate partners with him.

This is what every prophet and messenger was sent with and had to deal with. Yet believing that there is only one God who revealed to them the message, they knew that nothing that the leaders will offer them will change their mind. They were harmed and mistreated throughout the whole time they were preaching and yet they did not stop because they were offered a better life.  That is what I thought about while watching the movie. No matter what the Nazis were offering, is it really worth selling your soul for?

The major objection of the film for me is how the Jewish prisoners were able to feel at peace with themselves for working with the Nazis to help them win the war.  It is understandable as to why they did it, but it still feels like it is the wrong thing to do.  When you see your family and friends being tortured and killed and to go and give your enemy a hand in that torture and killing, metaphorically speaking, is something that I cannot understand.

Knowing that if the Nazis win, they will probably be killed as well, since there is no use for them anymore, and still willing to go through helping them for a little time of comfort is unacceptable.  Being able to be okay hearing others being killed while you believe what you are doing is right is definitely wrong.

Toward the end of the movie Salomon intentionally gambles away all of money and explains to the female that he could always make more money. This scene represents the fictitious nature of money in the most overt sense. Salomon can literally create money through counterfeit, but I cannot help but see a parallel to the invented and socially accepted tale of money.  This takes me back to the first day of class where you mentioned that the money is just paper and has no value, but just the value that we give it. 

He was able to counterfeit money like it had no meaning and that is the value he gave it.  Money to him did not matter because he did never needed to work for it.  He needed to work to make it but did not do the work to deserve it.  This really shows that money at some point can have no value. If a person is no working for the money, then it has no value to him or her because he can always either steal money or make it.

The movie’s theme gives both sides as to whether one would sell his soul to devil or die in order to maintain faithful.  Those who worked with the Nazis for comfort had their reason, which was the comfort they received and not being killed, and those who opposed had theirs, which was to not help the Nazis win the war.  From both point of views, it is an understandable decision by either side.  Stefan Ruzowitzky is an Academy Award-winning Austrian film director and screenwriter.  Adolf Burger is a Jewish Slovak typographer, memoir writer, and Holocaust survivor involved in Operation Bernhard. The film The Counterfeiters, based largely on his memoirs, won the 2007 Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film.