No Knowl­edge is use­less : even forgery ! [ enna dhairiy­athula nee title ell­laam vaikara !! ]

The coun­ter­feit­ers [ 2007 — Drama / German ]

Directed by : Ste­fan Ruzowitzky.

Plot:

It’s a fic­tional flick based on ‘Oper­a­tion Bern­hard’**. The film opens with a Jew­ish coun­ter­feiter [ SME named Salomon — Sal] spend­ing n enjoy­ing life in Monte Carlo. He builds rela­tion with a new girl and she finds a tat­too [ pris­oner of Auschwitz ] in his body which unveils the flash­back. [ a good tech­nique : always needed to grab the viewer into the film ]. Back in 1936 : Sal is arrested in Berlin for forg­ing cur­ren­cies and pass­ports [ he runs a work­shop ] and moved to a local con­cen­tra­tion camp. He uses his tal­ent for his sur­vival — he draw por­traits of the jail­ers. They treat him bet­ter. After 5 years, Sal is moved then to ‘Sach­sen­hausen’ con­cen­tra­tion camp where they run a forgery workshop.He gets assign­ments for forg­ing pounds and US dol­lars. He gets a friend who ide­ally opposes to help Nazis for this operation.

The film ques­tions more about the per­sonal morale about sur­vival and loy­alty. How Sal com­pleted the work ? How he man­ages his loy­alty to his friends ? How he sur­vived ? What choice(s) did he make ? The story ends back in Monte Carlo beach. the end­ing dia­log was a good one.

His­tory :
** Oper­a­tion Bern­hard : It’s a secret Ger­man plan to shake the econ­omy of the other coun­tries espe­cially British and US. The largest coun­ter­feit­ing oper­a­tion ever hap­pened in his­tory. This 130 mil­lion pounds, cash swin­dling oper­a­tion hap­pened dur­ing the world war II.

View :
The hero is not a Rambo kind of per­son rather he is short and thin. This war movie is inter­est­ing instead of get­ting into emo­tions. The pic­ture han­dles the men­tal­ity in camp about sur­vival, choices etc., The guards spit on him and abuse him. He with­stands all of them with­out giv­ing up his skills. His friends urge him to give up forgery as they indi­rectly help Nazis to get empowered.

The way the film starts and end is too good for a darker flash­back. Unlike the other con­cen­tra­tion camp movies, this shows a lux­u­ri­ous set of pris­on­ers who get proper food and care. The argu­ments between Sal and his friends are inter­est­ing as both of their stands have jus­ti­fi­ca­tions. The police inspec­tor who arrests Sal first, is the com­man­dant in the Sach­sen­hausen camp. His char­ac­ter was also used properly.

Very inter­est­ing movie in the holo­caust series and also, it won the acad­emy award for the best for­eign lang pic­ture in 2007.

Other Holo­caust movies I watched [ Let me be lit­tle hum­ble here — because till now, there are 343 movies made, based on Holo­caust !! ]. I had been to Holo­caust museum in Wash­ing­ton DC, once [ seen the orig­i­nal wooden wagon used for transportation ].

1. Schindler’s list [ I watched it in Sathyam :) — Class ]

2. The Pianist — Good one

3. Life is beau­ti­ful — Excel­lent one.

4. Down­fall [ Ger­man — Good one ].

Happy watch­ing. Small n first step in writ­ing my reviews !

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