Review: Die Fälscher (Ruzowitzky, 2007)

The Counterfeiters, to give the film its Anglicized title, is an intelligent, if a little too underplayed, drama based on one of the most audacious attempts at financial sabotage ever undertaken. The plan: for Nazi Germany to flood the British and American markets with fake currency, thus precipitating economic collapse in the Allied countries. The workforce carrying out this particular task comprised prisoners-of-war in the Sachsenhausen camp, one of whom, our protagonist Salomon Sorowitsch, a Jewish master counterfeiter, was rescued from certain death from the concentration camps. In Sachsenhausen they are kept in much better conditions than other prisoners-of-war as reward for their efforts to help the regime, though this puts them in a morally questionable position.

The film nicely presents us with Salomon’s dilemma, a somewhat Catch-22-like situation: successfully complete the forgery, and end up rendering his position redundant, which would inevitably result in his execution, or fail to complete the task, which would ultimately lead to a similar fate. Salomon is not the only one facing this ‘choice’: another of the counterfeiting team, Adolf Burger, has made his choice and repeatedly sabotages the operation in order to hinder the Nazi plan, much to Salomon’s distress. But does his motivation to succeed derive from a desire for self-preservation, or a blinkered desire to prove to himself that he can perform one of the greatest forgeries of all-time? We must remember that these men are still alive only because of the usefulness of their talents, yet application of these talents ultimately perpetuates the war machine which captured them in the first place.

The position of Salomon is paralleled with his one of his captors, SS Officer Friedrich Herzog, who shares a similar philosophy with him; that ultimately we are confined to act in our own self-interest, no matter what the consequences for others. In a dramatic sense, we are made to feel little sympathy for Sal, and idealistically side with Burger. Yet the film makes us aware that, while this is the choice the viewer has no heistation to make in the comfort of the cinema, in the real world many of us would take the easy option and appease our captors if it led to an easier, more comfortable life; this, the film argues, is precisely the kind of resignation to apparent inevitabilty that allowed the Nazi regime to maintain power over Germany in the 1930s and 40s.

The film handles its subject in a very unflashy non-melodramatic way, and it is not sentimental about the war as so often these sorts of films can be. This does, however, have the effect of making the film seem a little flat and unengaging; while the story is an interesting one, sometimes there is not enough there to sink one’s teeth into properly, and I felt a little underwhelmed by the end. However, this is nitpicking, and I would much rather a serious film like this was handled understatedly, rather than in the sickly over-sentimental way of films like The Shawshank Redemption. Die Fälscher is a film that succeeds in telling its story in an admirable and genuinely thought-provoking way.

Great Films: Rashomon (Kurosawa, 1950)

Famously, Akira Kurosawa’s Rashomon has given its name to any situation where differing perspectives of the same event contradict each other, and this device has since been used in several much lesser films, such as Bryan Singer’s flashy, overrated The Usual Suspects. While this is the most obviously startling and challenging feature of Rashomon, after repeated viewings this is almost forgotten in favour of gawping at Kazuo Miyagawa’s incredible cinematography, certainly ranking the film with the likes of The Third Man, The Seventh Seal and Citizen Kane as one of the greatest monochrome films of all-time.

The film begins with three characters sheltering from a storm in the ruins of a gatehouse, two of whom, a woodcutter and a priest, are recounting to the third, a commoner, the details of a dramatic recent event: the murder of a samurai, and rape of his wife. We then are told the story through four differing viewpoints, each differing significantly in detail with each other. While these varying accounts are being told to the commoner, what the viewer begins to do is piece together a picture of the various motivations, interests and prejudices of the story’s protagonists. However, once we are invited to question these accounts, the viewer naturally then begins to question the woodcutter and the priest: what are their motivations? The extension of this, of course, is to ask the same question the filmmaker.

As mentioned above, while the viewer is considering all of this, it is easy to miss what the camera has been up to during this time. For a start, some of the shots of the forest where the flashbacks take place are breathtaking; hot and sticky compared with the rain-sodden ambience of the gatehouse. Light creeps through the branches onto the actors’ faces seemingly naturalistically, though this effect actual required great ingenuity from cinematographer Miyagawa. Also, witness the use of quick editing; 407 separate shots in the film, according to Kurosawa scholar Donald Richie, ranking it alongside the last Michael Bay film in terms of fast cutting. This miraculously passes the viewer by on first viewing, as perhaps do some of the more complicated and innovative camera movements and pans.

Rashomon sent a shockwave through the film world on its international release in 1951, though it garnered some criticism from the domestic Japanese critics who labelled it ‘too western’. Nevertheless, it can be seen as the film which opened up the world to Japanese cinema, as well as announcing the arrival of what would become one of cinema’s greatest directors onto the global stage. Its stars similarly would go on to greatness; Toshirō Mifune, the bandit, would star in many more of Kurosawa’s films, most famously in Seven Samurai, whilst Takashi Shimura would memorably go on to play the ageing bureaucrat in Ikiru, my personal favourite in the Kurosawa canon. DP Miyagawa would go on become Japan’s preeminent cinematographer, and work with other greats such as Ozu and Mizoguchi.

Rashomon remains a great statement about the potential of cinema as an artform, a meditation on the subjective nature of truth, as well as being one of the most visually dazzling films of all time.

Great Films #810: Love and Death (Allen, 1975)


Woody Allen’s Love and Death is not only his most consistently funny film, but also marks the first key turning point in his career. Before its release in 1975, the films he directed, such as Bananas, Sleeper, and Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex, verged on the slapstick, and were more episodic in structure; after Love and Death came a series of three more meditative, mature films, namely Annie Hall, Interiors and Manhattan. Sandwiched in between these is this 85 minute masterpiece, which though rooted in the former aesthetic, points towards the latter.

The film is essentially an homage to proto-existentialist Russian literature, in particular through numerous references to Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy, and the many mock-philosophical debates about existence and death. The prominent use of Prokofiev in the score adds to the Russian flavour. However, the setup allows director Allen to parody many other of his key reference points, most notably nudges to the films of Ingmar Bergman and Eisenstein’s classic Battleship Potemkin.

However, describing the film in these terms is to ignore its main selling-point: the humour. The laughs come thick and fast, by means of slapstick, parody, satire, anachronisms as well as some fantastic one-liners and put-downs. Boris is, like most of Allen’s self-played protagonists, equally cursed and blessed, with his trademark insecurities and completely unbelievable sexual magnetism. Love and Death represents the high-water mark of Allen’s comedy output, and as with all great comedies, it’s best to just let the jokes speak for themselves.

Review: The Heartbreak Kid (Farrelly and Farrelly, 2007)

While opinions may differ concerning the merits of Farrelly brothers films, at the end of the day, they have proved to be one of the most successful producing, directing and writing partnerships of comedies in recent years. They have, in the past, proved to be box-office gold; There’s Something About Mary, for instance, grossed (no pun intended) $176 million in the US alone, froma budget of $23 million. Similarly Dumb and Dumber, from a budget of $16 million, went on to take $246 million worldwide. These kind of figures give the brothers significant clout in Hollywood, and allows them a relative freedom to pick and choose what projects they like.

They have, however, only enjoyed moderate success in recent years; Shallow Hal and Me, Myself and Irene took some money, but Stuck on You and Fever Pitch have both struggled since their respective releases. In need of a hit, then, they have turned to remaking a 1972 classic comedy, originally starring Charles Grodin and Cybill Shepherd. Here lies one of the first problems; Charles Grodin in one of the great underrated comedy performers: one needs only to think of his wonderful turn opposite Robert DeNiro in Midnight Run to remember this. Ben Stiller’s comedy style is different; he is at his best playing rather creepy characters, such as Derek Zoolander, or Dodgeball’s White Goodman, characters you are not supposed to empathise with. In The Heartbreak Kid, his role is of a 40-year old loser in love who we are meant to feel sorry for; however, both the script and Stiller’s performance erase any sympathy the audience might have for the character within the first 20 minutes. He is extremely shallow and self-centred, and we are supposed to believe that he has met his soul mate simply because they have a chat together that lasts longer than 30 seconds. This can work as a nice setup for comedy situations; for instance, i am always intensely irritated by Andie MacDowell’s character in Groundhog Day, yet am prepared to go along with Bill Murray’s obsession with her simply because it is a device for his situation to be exploited. Here, however, it falls more than a little flat.

Of course, this being a Farrelly brothers movie, there are the standard gross-out parts, but even these feel rather subdued, given what we’ve come to expect from them, though as the BBFC website points out there are ‘sado masochistic acts and bestiality’. Elsewhere, the laughs are few and far between, though there is the odd chuckle here and there; not enough for a comedy film though, which, let’s face it, is there to make you laugh. For such a seemingly simple setup, the narrative is surprisingly muddled, which doesn’t help the viewer have any coherent sense of what the film’s intent is. Nice bit of Bowie on the soundtrack, though. It does appear, though, that this is not the film to relaunch the Farrelly brothers’ careers; grossing only $14 million in its first weekend, it will probably struggle to recoup its budget. Next up for them is a film of The Three Stooges, maybe this will be an appropriate vehicle for their talents.