By Ron Wilkinson Feb 22, 2008, 12:12 GMT
As much a comment on peace as on war, criminals do the right thing in the wrong context for the murderous boss in the suburbs. Dark comedy at it’s finest
Not just another WWII concentration camp, Sachsenhausen was up to something else entirely. Commandant Sturmbannführer Friedrich Herzog (Devid Striesow) had found a way to make money for the sagging Nazi war effort in its final days. That is, he had literally found a way to make money. At the center of the operation was Salomon “Sally” Sorowitsch (Karl Markovics), an accomplished forger and counterfeiter who controlled the Berlin underground with street savvy that made Himmler’s Gestapo look like a Neighborhood Watch program.
After Herzog busts Sally on counterfeiting, he is sent to a certain death sentence in a slave labor camp. But the smiling and upbeat Herzog appears again with a proposition Sally can’t refuse. The two will join together for the perfect crime, the crime that isn’t a crime, at least in wartime. Sally will forge English pound notes with which to flood the world market and bring Great Britain’s economy to its knees.
At ease with his (relative) privileges as the kingpin of the bogus pound note operation, Herzog assigned Sally the next big thing---counterfeiting the American dollar. Herzog knows Sally can do it because the con was working on the dollar when he was arrested by Herzog in the first place.
But all is not well in the buckwerks as another inmate with a key part of the process, Adolf Burger (August Diehl), has decided the cozy little group of con artists is just a little too cozy with the Nazi war effort. He refuses to help the dollar project and sabotages the celluloid.
Herzog is under pressure. In spite of the war and the crumbling Nazi regime he has a comfortable home and family. Modeling many a post-war corporate manager, Herzog uses his ability to work the system to be a successful Nazi without actually murdering anyone. But now he and his pampered suburban family of four are under dire threat of being sent to concentration camps themselves.
There comes a time when one must produce. Even in the public sector.
The immediate reaction to this film is to compare it to recent blockbuster concentration camp / holocaust dramas (“Life is Beautiful,” Schindler’s List,” “The Pianist”). Actually, Lajos Koltai's 2006 “Fateless” is probably more to the point. But such a knee-jerk doesn’t do justice to the subtle humor and unvarnished irony represented by the war hero / criminal duality. Herzog arrests Sally for counterfeiting and then throws him into a war-criminal run slave labor camp where he is celebrated for his ability to counterfeit.
Burger refuses to perform the counterfeiting, not because it is wrong, but because the Nazis think it is right. He is quite comfortable with ruining countries’ economies as long as he doesn’t have to help the Reich to do it. Herzog, the chameleon international corporate manager turned general, will do whatever pays his mortgage. He knows, like the Stasi secret police Hauptmann Gerd Wiesler in “Lives of Others” (Ulrich Mühe) that the machine is dying. He will make the best of what he can, while he can, and pack his own golden parachute.
On the other hand his adjutant, the ludicrously stupid Hauptscharführer Holst (Martin Brambach) is a psycho who is happy enough tormenting people before summarily blowing their brains out.
The film has a marvelous undercurrent of sneering suggestion and barely veiled contempt for the military industrial establishment, which seems to function the same in war as in peace. There are echoes of Billy Wilder’s “Stalag 17” in which the ruthless Sefton (William Holden) builds a Swiss bank of cigarettes betting against the success of his fellow inmates’ escapes. Holst in this film even looks like Otto Preminger in “Stalag,” both of which look like the archetypal Nazi clowns, Colonel Klink and Sergeant Schultz in the post “Stalag” TV classic, “Hogan’s Heroes.”
Sally himself begins acting like Humphrey Bogart in “Casablanca,” goes through an Adrian Brody phase as he nears death in his first prison camp, transforms to Sefton during the successful counterfeiting operation and ends up a sort of “Citizen Kane” at the end. He is rich, but broken; a shell of his pre-war self.
There are many levels of drama and comedy that keep this film moving. The extraordinary brutality emphasizes the honesty of the film, but detracts from the dark comedy just below the surface. Each extreme acts as a check and balance on the other, to keep the film in a delicate balance between simple Nazi denunciation and the more complex and timely criticisms of the international corporate machine.
Release: February 22, 2008MPAA: Rated R for some strong violence, brief sexuality/nudity and languageRuntime: 98 minutes Country: Austria / Germany Language: GermanColor: Color
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