The Counterfeiters: Printmaking’s Day at the Movies.
Die Fälscher or The Counterfeiters (2006, Sony Pictures Classics) was awarded the Oscar for best foreign language film in 2007 to much fan fare. The director is Stefan Ruzowitzky, who brought us the WW II comedy All the Queens Men (2001), a film best described as the illegitimate step-child of Bosom Buddies and Saving Private Ryan, returns to WW II drama again to make The Counterfeiters. Thankfully he does so this time with a guide in the form of Adolf Burger, a Slovakian holocaust survivor, typographer and writer . Burger’s memoir The Devil’s Workshop provided the factual basis for the films main plot structure.
The Film’s narrative unfolds into a tight drama seen from the point of view of Salomon Sorowitsch (played superbly by Karl Markovics), a notorious forger and expert of the printerly arts. The gist, without betraying any spoilers, depicts Salomon’s capture in Berlin by the Nazis, his interment in various concentration and labour camps and eventual forced inclusion into “Operation Berhard”. Brought together by a team of SS officers a beleaguered team of Jewish printers, engravers, paper-makers and bankers are forced to work under near impossible conditions to create perfect forgeries of the British Pound and US Dollar. Caught in an moral and ethical quandary the counterfeiters must decide if saving their lives by helping their Nazi captors is worth the cost to the larger war.
This movie rocks for many reasons, I’ll enumerate three:
1) It’s a Thriller! The acting and directing is minimal and suspenseful. Let’s face it, this film is cramming several WW II sub-genre’s into one package and the opportunities for bad melodrama loom large, But they pull it off with precision.
2) For once Printmaking is the good guy! I can’t tell you how many films I’ve sat through, sinking lower and lower in my seat as printmaking is once again depicted as the stereo-typical mustachioed villain dynamiting the bridge or poisoning the water supply. Finally we get our parade! Oh, does if feel good to see printmaking chewing up scenery in this movie!
3) Let’s face it, I’m sure we’ve all spent a late night or two humped over a piece of copper with burin engraver in one hand and a loop in the other desperately trying in vain to the make our very own $1 plate. Beyond the great acting and suspenseful story line this film offers some tips that will kick-start your little hobby.
This film, while no longer in wide theatrical release, is available as a DVD for purchase or rental.
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