The Counterfeiters * * * * *
The strength of concentration-camp stories is that they usually deal with life-and-death decisions and their moral implications - there is no time for cosmetics. One wrong decision can lead to someone's death, sometimes many more, if not an entire race.
What's interesting here is that we are told the story of a Jew from the land that gave birth to Adolf Hitler, Austria, as opposed to an American Jewish point of view, and it gives the story a completely fresh angle, which is partially why it won the Oscar for best foreign film last year.
Sali Sorowitsch (Markovics) is not a pleasant character in late-30s Germany. Apart from the fact that he wears a moustache that makes him look a little like the rising fuhrer, he is also a counterfeiter and, worse, he tells someone who owes him money that he might meet with some violence.
Though talented as a fine artist, Sorowitsch asks, much like Willem Dafoe's thug in To Live and Die in LA: "Why earn money by making art? Earning money by making money is much easier." So, he is not a particularly savoury character.
Come the war, he is roped in by the man who arrested him just before he fled the coop that was Germany. Like most men, Sorowitsch was held back by a particularly beautiful woman in the guise of Marie Bäumer.
Now he and other similarly talented people have to forge pounds and then dollars to win the war on that particular front. This gives rise to various moral dilemmas, which are constantly raised by the idealistic young Adolf Burger (Diehl).
Remember, these are men who have lost their entire families in other camps like Auschwitz. But the rather dour Sorowitsch never loses focus about his survival because he is clear that he can only honour the family he lost by doing just that, surviving.
Burger, on the other hand, says they must look at the number of their fellow Jews whose lives will be lost if the money they make prolongs the war. On and on these dilemmas go.
But almost as interesting as Sorowitsch is the man who arrested him. Freidrich Herzog (Striesow) was a chief of police before the war, now he is the Sturmbahnfuhrer in charge of that section that must produce fake money.
He is not an out-and-out sadist, like one of his corporals, but he is still on that side and he is deeply patronising in a way that only Aryans can be. Think certain whites who used to tell their black servants how they, the whites, had so many problems.
When the war suddenly comes to an end Sorowitsch gets a clear chance to kill Herzog, and it's the way that this is handled that gives The Counterfeiters its artistic and moral superiority above many others of its kind. See it, savour it.
Defiance * * * *
Slowly, films about Jewish resistance to the planned Holocaust have been emerging. One of them was the harrowing The Grey Zone.
This one is not so grim; in fact, not only does it have a heroic and therefore uplifting dimension to it, but it also provides us with some astute insights into one of the things with which this country is struggling at present, namely leadership.
This true story revolves around three Belorussian brothers whose parents were wiped out and so the sons took to their vast forests to hide from and oppose the Nazis.
Tuvia (an excellent Craig) is not a very educated fellow, like, say Jacob Zuma. He doesn't know what an intellectual among his refugees is always on about, but he most certainly has an instinct for leadership.
His brother, Zus (a smouldering Schreiber), on the other hand, is a fighter. He doesn't want to take in women and the elderly: they are baggage. He resents taking in the upper classes who used to look down on him and his siblings.
Tuvia, however, welcomes all. Hence, brotherly and ideological conflict.
Zus will join up with the Russians to oppose the Nazis, until he comes to realise that they, too, don't give a hoot about his race and his cause.
The third brother, Asael (Bell), later on shows his colours as a leader when it's required, having been a romantic hothead for most of the movie.
The movie is very much like an old-fashioned novel. We get to see how this small community lives, loves, starves, jokes, suffers and thinks. For example, two intellectuals argue about Descartes and the older gentleman, who always confuses Tuvia with his highfalutin language, says: "You annoy me, therefore I exist."
It's a big, rich, warm and well-written film in the epic style of Zwick (The Last Samurai, Blood Diamond), and it's rewarding on many levels. Apart from the music being just a little too much at times, it doesn't put a foot wrong.
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