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Message: <br /><br /> If you are having trouble reading this email, you may view this article online at: http://www.jweekly.com/34409/full/34409/austrian-director-forges-true-tale-of-counterfeiters/ <br /><br /> <b>Austrian director forges true tale of ‘Counterfeiters’</b> <br /> Friday, February 22, 2008 | by <p>michael fox </p> <br /><br /><p>The Russian-Jewish “hero” of the gripping wartime drama “The Counterfeiters” is a forger, a hustler and a trader on the black market.<br /><br /> Salomon “Sally” Sorowitsch is also a lone wolf with no family, no Jewish identity and no loyalty to anyone but himself. He lives by his wits and looks out for No. 1. In other words, he’s not the typical protagonist of a Holocaust film.<br /><br /> “It makes everything more human in a way, and I think this is one reason why Jewish audiences especially like the movie <br /><br /> a lot,” says Austrian director Stefan Ruzowitzky.<br /><br /> “If you show Jews only as flawless victims waiting to be murdered, it’s difficult to relate to these people,” he continued. “The point is that a crook who’s pretty unlikable in the beginning, such a person does not deserve to be killed in a concentration camp [either]. It’s not only about flawless people who shouldn’t be there, but also the not-so-good ones.”<br /><br /> Ruzowitzky’s riveting morality tale is based on “The Devil’s Workshop,” in which Adolf Burger relates his experiences as one of a group of Jewish printers and graphic artists forced by the Nazis to forge the pound and the dollar. The honest artisans were made to apply their skills to a criminal activity for the first time — with the exception of Sally, who had made his living creating fake documents. <br /><br /> The prisoners were housed in a separate barracks in Sachsenhausen, and provided with comfortable beds and good food. They lived on Easy Street compared to the poor souls interned in the death camp — just one of the thorny dilemmas posed in the film.<br /><br /> “The Counterfeiters” is nominated for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, which will be presented Sunday night, Feb. 24. (Its competition includes the Israeli film “Beaufort.”) The film opens Feb. 29 around the Bay Area.<br /><br /> The film begins immediately after the war, with Sally checking into a posh hotel on the Riviera, then flashes back to Berlin where his odyssey begins. It was an instinctive decision, Ruzowitzy confided during a recent interview in San Francisco.<br /><br /> “The film starts with the ultimate happy ending,” says Ruzowitzky in fluent English. “After six years in a concentration camp, he’s sitting at the beach of the Cote d’Azur with a beautiful woman and the pockets full of money. Then he starts to ask himself, ‘Why me? Do I deserve this? Did I compromise too much? Did I come too close to evil?’ And this is what the movie is about.”<br /><br /> Although “The Counterfeiters” is full of suspense, we know from the outset that Sally survives. Instead of worrying whether he’ll live or not, the viewer is free to participate in the choices Sally makes — and to weigh the cost. <br /><br /> The 46-year-old Ruzowitzky did an extraordinary amount of research for his sixth film, and his commitment is evident in every frame. <br /><br /> “Being Austrian, and having been raised in Germany, and having grandparents who were Nazi sympathizers, I always felt the urge to make a statement as a filmmaker,” he confides. “The idea was to make a movie for my generation and even younger people, and that means for people who don’t have any guilt. It’s no longer about saying ‘j’accuse,’ I accuse you, because those who were involved in the crimes, they are dead. It’s rather about inviting these new generations to be interested in these issues.”<br /><br /> At the same time, Ruzowitzky acknowledges the sensitivity required to make a film about the Holocaust. After reading every memoir he could find, he feels he was granted a kind of permission. <br /><br /> “[In] all these autobiographies, it’s almost like a cliché that whenever the author is about to die, about to give up, there’s always the thought, ‘I have to go on because I need to tell that story.’ It’s such an important thing for all these survivors. I feel if we respect them, it means that we have to go on telling these stories about the Holocaust. I think it’s allowed to make action movies, adventure stories, morality plays, comedies, whatever. Of course there’s some responsibility involved. But basically this is allowed if you tell the right story making the right points.”<br /><br /> Adolf Burger asserts his determination to survive and inform others on the first page of his book. (Sally, true to his nature, wants to live because he enjoys the pleasure of wine and women.) Burger is still alive, still going strong in his 90s and still telling his story. He’ll be at the Academy Awards, sitting with Stefan Ruzowitzky.<br /><br /> <br><br /><br /> <b>“The Counterfeiters”</b> opens Feb. 29 at the Clay in San Francisco, Albany Twin in Albany, Sequoia Twin in Mill Valley, Aquarius Twin in Palo Alto, Century 5 CineArts in Pleasant Hill and Los Gatos Twin in Los Gatos.<br /><br /> </p> <p> </p>

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