Tuesday, September 16, 2008
Good movie
We watched The Counterfeiters last weekend. It's an Austrian film that won the foreign film Oscar for 2007 and it's terrific. A master forger is arrested and held in a concentration camp and one day the Nazis decide they are going to forge British pounds and attempt to undermine the British economy. Apparently this idea occurred to Roosevelt and Churchill, too, other way around of course, but they didn't put it into action. The prisoners were so good at it - linen in the paper, complicated printing presses, numbering system of the Bank of England, etc., etc. - that they floated nearly 400 million pounds (~9 million physical pieces of money). After the war the Brits had to change the paper and the size of the bills lest the fake bills inflate their economy. Apparently they were truly indistinguishable from the real ones.
There are slogans on the walls of the forgers' workroom and print shop that are never translated but are a perfect touch of the sadism we all know abounded. "Mit Halbheiten wird nichts Ganzes gewonnen" (Half will never become whole - presumably meaning you must work full-tilt, not half-heartedly), and "Jedem das Seine" (Everyone his own - presumably meaning you get what you put into it) and "Mehr tun als es die Pflicht befiehlt !" (Do more than your duty commands you to). The intensity and uses of such slogans are hard to deal with.
The movie also poses a challenging dilemma. Should you sabotage an enterprise run by evildoers, your enemy, simply because they are doing it? Or should you resist sabotage because your fellow 145 prisoners will be killed if you do? Might it have stopped the Nazis sooner if they had sabotaged the effort? Would sending comrades to their death although foiling the Nazis be the using bad means to accomplish a good end? Would it have been justifiable?
There's also a wry telling of these events in a British series called Private Schultz. Very funny because it shows the utter absurdity of the horrific events and manages to be smart at the same time while yet never ignoring the miserable situation.
The Counterfeiters skillfully presents its story and questions while being neither preachy nor somber and all the while telling an enthralling tale. I highly recommended both the tv series and the film.
There are slogans on the walls of the forgers' workroom and print shop that are never translated but are a perfect touch of the sadism we all know abounded. "Mit Halbheiten wird nichts Ganzes gewonnen" (Half will never become whole - presumably meaning you must work full-tilt, not half-heartedly), and "Jedem das Seine" (Everyone his own - presumably meaning you get what you put into it) and "Mehr tun als es die Pflicht befiehlt !" (Do more than your duty commands you to). The intensity and uses of such slogans are hard to deal with.
The movie also poses a challenging dilemma. Should you sabotage an enterprise run by evildoers, your enemy, simply because they are doing it? Or should you resist sabotage because your fellow 145 prisoners will be killed if you do? Might it have stopped the Nazis sooner if they had sabotaged the effort? Would sending comrades to their death although foiling the Nazis be the using bad means to accomplish a good end? Would it have been justifiable?
There's also a wry telling of these events in a British series called Private Schultz. Very funny because it shows the utter absurdity of the horrific events and manages to be smart at the same time while yet never ignoring the miserable situation.
The Counterfeiters skillfully presents its story and questions while being neither preachy nor somber and all the while telling an enthralling tale. I highly recommended both the tv series and the film.
Labels: modern culture, moralism, movies, questions
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