The Counterfeiters by Stefan Ruzowitzky[2007]; Rating: 1 in 5

I said “slap me thrice and hand me over me momma” when, after watching this film, I recalled it is Austrian by birth. This is a stinkingly American film. It valorizes, eulogizes, extols, lauds, and sings “Ave Maria” to all possible clichés Americans, oh! so like about Nazi atrocities. How many films have you seen about concentration camps? From the early “Young Lions” to our veritable “Schindler’s List”, there is one and only predominant cliché about the Nazis: they were a mass of extreme psychopaths with an insatiable appetite for unexplainable cruelty. A complete society and race of Buffalo Bills and Tooth Fairies. And no one even remotely as interesting as Hannibal the “Cannibal”. Have you ever seen a movie from America that takes the pain to criticize Nazi ideology? The concept of genetico-racial superiority? Have you ever seen the broad picture? All you have seen are either psychopaths, or reluctant humans forced to go against their “conscience”, and of course, the win of the good one. Catharsis to the point of “Puking Pastille” [I thank J. K. Rowling for the phrase. It is one of her very few noble deeds]. You want to know, why is it so? I will tell you the reason: America has not yet come into terms with the reality of the Nazi era. In fact, a large and predominant part of the American society believes in some of the most fundamental Nazi ideologies: Genetico-racial superiority, belief in super-humans (if you don’t believe this, then you have not watched “Rambo”), belief in being the core of the world (have you watched their ‘World Series’?), and over all, a middle-class peasant political elitism that exhibits a violent, and self-righteous bigotry towards every other class. Hence, America cannot afford to criticize the politics of Nazis. And what else were the Nazis other than a political organization trying to make itself the society? As a result, all you see are faux-documentaries, and human tragedies that are blanker than blank. Still, I understand the American Dilemma, and kind of tolerate it. But when a director from a country physically and metaphysically abused by Nazi ideology reiterates the same void craps, it seems to be an act of abominable sacrilege. This movie tastes like a bowl of “two-minute” instant noodle. If you have seen your films seriously, you will be able to predict every forthcoming sequence without troubling your mind. It is a blatant copy of American concentration-camp films. Predictably, it won the Oscar. That has enabled me to re-discover my faith in Oscar.

The film centers on a Jewish counterfeiter, Salomon Sorowitsch (played by Karl Markovics), who is used in an operation to create lots of fake dollars and pounds by his old apprehender, Friedrich Herzog (played by Devid Striesow, and the spelling is not a mistake) at a Nazi concentration camp. The rest of the film can be guessed by anyone other than zombies: the guy Solomon becomes a copy of the character played by Sir Alec Guinness in “The Bridge on the River Kwai”; he starts to compromise with everything and tries to survive. Bluh, bluh. There were potentially good sections in the film that remained under-developed: at the beginning and the end of the movie, we see Solomon, after the war, playing extravagantly at a casino. The character of Herzog had brilliant potential: he is an opportunist who happens to wear the Nazi swastika, and believes he will be “handling humans” after the war. I am amazed they never foresaw the potential of a film where a gambler and a crafty bureaucrat meet and we discover that the gambler was the prisoner of a concentration camp, where the bureaucrat used to be the jailer. Someone like Michael Mann would have done exactly that. But we are talking about lesser humans here. Frankly speaking, I am flabbergasted with these routine “Nazi” movies. And, like salt over wound, it uses one of the most disgusting cliches of contemporary cinema: jerky hand-held cameras, as if making a faux-documentary. It seems that the film fraternity has completely forgotten the characteristics of the genre called mock-documentary. it was the last thing, as a viewer I needed. Enough was enough.

I will instead give you a bigger picture. There is this lovely little 1969 comedy called “If it’s Tuesday, This must be Belgium” [Give me that lovely early morning bedroom romantic sequence with beautiful Suzanne Pleshette (the girl from “The Bird”, remember?) anytime, any day, in film or in life, I will lap it up gladly]. In it, there is this pair of couples in the film, one American and other German. Both the husbands use to brag about “the war” absurdly. The American part is at least true. The World War II is their moment of greatest glory, the point when they reached “humanity”; it is their counter-balance to their mass-inferiority complex about not having a racial tradition. It is the war when they became the messiahs of all the free men. They need such movies to boost their egos. I am not American; I don’t want to be one too. I do nod such craps. Not anymore.

This film is disgusting not because it is made by the worst director and the worst script-writer ever, but because it makes mockery of the medium of thought called film. Film is as much a medium thought as literature is. Anyone who insults that, anyone who treats like a piece of Weekly Easy-to-make Recipe for Tomato soup, deserves to be vilified to the limit. I demand a minimum level of intelligence from a creator, especially when he is pretending to be discoursing about “serious” matters. This film does not have that quality. It will get a 1 from me.

If you want to see a good film, and if you are downloading torrents (legal, or illegal, its up to you. It has nothing to with me), then try downloading Gus Van Sant’s “Paranoid Park”. In him, we find a great director at the peak of his creative prowess. Twenty years from now, he will be counted as a creator critical to the development of contemporary cinema; his films will become standard canon at any film studies department. So miss at your own risk. And, if you are a devotee of Western Classical music, and also like romantic films, watch “The Competition” (with Richard Dreyfuss and Miranda-ish Amy Irving) on Sony Pix. The music and the characters will get to you.

BAIDURYA CHAKRABARTI