Movie review: The Counterfeiters (Die Fälscher)

by Alex Bentley

Maybe it was the running time. Maybe it was the small screening room with a constant glare on the screen. Maybe it’s that I’ve become weary of Holocaust films after seeing so many good ones in the 1990s. But something (or several things) caused me to question how in the world The Counterfeiters (Die Fälscher) could win the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film.

Full disclosure: I have not seen any of the other nominated films for Best Foreign Language Film. But if they were deemed to be lesser than The Counterfeiters, then their quality must be poor indeed (or maybe it’s just another indicator that the Academy doesn’t know what it’s doing, since it didn’t even nominate what most consider to be the best foreign film last year, 4 Months, 3 Weeks & 2 Days). Regardless, while the story of The Counterfeiters may be fascinating and inspiring, its depiction on screen fails to elicit anywhere near the emotion that I’m sure writer/director Stefan Ruzowitzky and the producers were going for.

I’d have to blame the majority of this on the film’s short running time and editing decisions. Clocking in at a scant 98 minutes, the audience barely has time to fully comprehend the complexities of the story. Ruzowitzky never gives us time, anyway, as he speeds through virtually every segment of Salomon Sorowitsch’s (Karl Markovics) life. From what I could gather, Sorowitsch was a master counterfeiter prior to the onset of the Nazis’ rise to power. He was subsequently caught by someone he thought was a friend and sent to prison.

It’s here where it gets a bit fuzzy – at some point, Sorowitsch is transferred to a concentration camp, presumably because he’s Jewish, but at what point I couldn’t tell you because the film never makes it clear. Also, at some point, he’s put in charge of counterfeiting operations that the Nazis are running at the camp, but how that comes about is a mystery as well. It’s as if Ruzowitzky felt he had such a great story to tell that he couldn’t wait to get to the good parts -- only the good parts didn’t turn out so great because he neglected to fill in the necessary details in between. A scene toward the end makes a big deal that the counterfeiters were physically separated from other concentration camp prisoners, which would’ve had a greater impact if that fact had been given more import earlier in the film.

I get the feeling that Ruzowitzky viewed this as his Schindler’s List, as there is one Nazi officer character who purportedly tried to make life easier for the counterfeiters. But his role, like most of the others in the film, is given short shrift and the audience is left wondering what, if any, significance he held. All in all, The Counterfeiters comes off as kind of Holocaust-lite. There are a few scenes we recognize as being emotional, but only because we’ve seen them done better in other films.