Normally, I don’t dig the Oscar bait holocaust movies, because they’re fundamentally flawed on a couple of levels. The underlying message that the holocaust was abhorrent is obvious, while visual attempts to depict the horrors can’t help but be weak, watered down approximations of what really happened. The Counterfeiters however is a different beast from the cinematic lineage that precedes it. Although it is the true story of a Jewish prisoner in a World War Two concentration camp, it is an original and engaging story.
Salomon is the best counterfeiter in Europe, living the good life in Berlin. He doesn’t fear the growing Nazi influence as he prides himself on an adaptability he sees as absent from the rest of his race. He is soon arrested, though, and sent to a concentration camp. His existence becomes one not of hard labour, instead heading a Nazi operation to flood the British and American currency with counterfeit bills and decimate their economies. Because of this, he and his team enjoy privileges unthinkable to other prisoners – soft beds, music and incentives to work harder instead of torture. Life is as good as it can be until fellow inmate, communist Burger, plans to sabotage the operation on moral grounds, endangering the lives of the whole team.
What follows is a story about the clash between idealism and pragmatism under the most extreme of circumstances. Just when it seems one is the correct path, events transpire to question it. This allows the film to be far more provocative and thought-provoking than the clear-cut morality applied to holocaust events up to this point in cinematic history.
The events are unpredictable because the primary character conflict is so original – a Jewish con man who is a born survivor and nobody’s victim versus a Nazi officer who prizes productivity over brutality. The nightmarish aspects of the genre are not completely jettisoned, instead expressed through character and setting rather than a pushy subtext. The one flaw is the cop-out finale, with its conciliatory nod to the conventional happy ending seeming out of step with the rest of the film.
But this can’t detract from what has come before it. The Counterfeiters is well made, well acted and well worth the price of admission.
