Los Angeles Journal


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2008-02-21

by John Esther

Interview with Stefan Ruzowitzky

Summary

Oscar nominated writer-director on The Counterfeiters

Article

Among the Oscar contenders and picks for Best Foreign Language Film this year, writer-director Stefan Ruzowitzky’s The Counterfeiters deservedly made it. One of the five to be nominated The Counterfeiters is the true story of Salomon “Sally” Sorowitsch (Karl Markovics), a Jewish-German counterfeiter who was forced to help the Nazi criminal war machine by creating bogus English Pound and United States Dollars.

For Sorowitsch’s efforts, he and his helpers lived better than their fellow concentration camps prisoners who were scarred, starved, slaved and slain. The counterfeiting crew had their own beds, ate comparatively well, and even had a table tennis set for recreation.

This hardly meant a life of leisure. Routinely the fascist fop Friedrich Herzog (Devid Striesow) would threaten the counterfeiters with fatality if they did not quickly succeed. While Sorowitsch and others reluctantly tried, the film’s real hero, Adolf Burger (August Diehl), secretly sabotaged the counterfeit plan. If these counterfeiters succeed, the Nazi machine will continue to oil itself with the blood of millions.

A riveting film about negotiating one’s survival against one’s principles, The Counterfeiters offers no fake rewards for doing the right thing at the right time for all time.

Los Angeles Journal: Why did you want to make this film?
Stefan Ruzowitzky: Oh, yeah, the big question to start with. One possible answer is that I always felt I should make some kind of statement about the Nazi era. Being Austrian and having grandparents who were more or less dedicated sympathizers of the Nazis and being aware that this is a part of the family’s history and country’s history you think you should do something about it. When I heard about this story I felt this could be a possibility to make both a political statement and a good, interesting movie. It’s suspenseful and emotional and has an interesting premise. Nowadays it’s no longer necessary to accuse somebody because those people you could accuse are dead. My audience would rather be the next generation, the great grandchildren. I invite them to be interested in these issues.

LAJ: You mentioned your family. A lot of people tend to brush something like this under the rug. Why keep the memories alive?
Ruzowitzky: The most interesting thing is how the German society of the early 1930s -- which was a democracy, cultivated, “the land of the thinkers” – how this society within a few years could turn around completely and become a murderous regime of terror. The Nazis killed mainly with the means of a modern bureaucracy. This is something we really have to learn from because the same thing could happen in our societies. Therefore it’s necessary to have a closer look and see what went wrong back then. What are the signs where things go wrong in our societies?

LAJ: Which of the characters do you identify with the most and why?
Ruzowitzky: Definitely, Sally. While writing I thought audiences would fall for Burger because he’s the young, good-looking guy with ideals. But I have the feeling everybody’s 100 percent on Sally’s side because we can identify with him much better. He’s not a guy with big ideas but tries to do the right thing and get along with dignity. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it does not work. Whereas those radicals like Burger are a bit boring in a storytelling way.

LAJ: I found Burger equally, if not more, interesting than Sorowitsch. The latter was just a well-skilled businessman keeping himself and his friends alive at whatever cost society as a greater whole may suffer. Burger is better. My favorite exchange in the film is when Sally says, “Nobody in here is willing to die for a principle,” and Adolf replies, “That’s why the Nazi system works.”
Ruzowitzky: The idea was to balance that as close as possible. If you watch Sally you go, “Yes, I would probably do the same thing,” when he says lines like that and then Burger answers and you go, “Oh, he’s right.” Both of these characters are very different, even opposing, but there is no right or wrong in this situation.

LAJ: In the film you are dealing with race and ideology. There are Jewish Germans with various standards of ethics while there are no good non-Jewish Germans. Can you discuss the delicacies and negotiations when representing race in film and filmmaking?
Ruzowitzky: I thought about it a lot whether a Jewish director would have done something different with these issues. For a Jewish person it would have been more interesting to talk about tragedy of the Jewish people being persecuted over the centuries. For me it was rather interesting to show a group of typical Germans – blue-collar workers, a Prussian banker, average people -- who, just because they have some Jewish ancestry, are put into a camp and bound to die. That for me is the big scandal of racism. My casting director initially came up with Jewish actors only, or mainly –

LAJ: Whatever “Jewish actors” implies?
Ruzowitzky: Yes, right. I definitely did not want to have that. The first draft I wrote for the script I had fallen into these clichés and stereotypes -- with the best of intentions. All my characters were cultivated and intellectual. The problem is that if you’re doing something like that, it’s sort of racism as well. If you say, “Those Jews are so much more intelligent and so much more cultivated than we are,” then they are different. Which shouldn’t be the point. My actors perform all sorts of different German dialects. These are average people. Burger, who you know is still alive, when he’s asked, “Do you hate the Germans,” he says, “No, most of my friends in the camp were Germans. Jewish Germans who saw themselves as Germans.”

LAJ: It is racist to put down a race, but it is also racist to exult a race. Which is what the Nazis were doing with their mythological implementation of the Aryan myth.
Ruzowitzky: Yes, yes, yes. Exactly. This is sort of the big political issue of the whole past century. To get across these concepts that because you are a man or a woman, black or white, Jew or non-Jew, aristocrat or farmer, that it would mean something. What we tried to achieve is that it is what a person does with his or her life, and that it should not be important how he or she is born.

LAJ: During the making of the film you met Burger. Considering what he went through and sacrificed what does that say about people these days who prefer to abstain from politics?
Ruzowitzky: It’s what I was saying before, how does a whole society turn around? There are books that show the process where it starts with little things. There is a vague anti-Semitism. Then gradually Jewish doctors would not be allowed to have Aryan patients, Jews would not be allowed to be members of sports clubs and then Jews would eventually lose all their civil rights. Then you could steal from them. Then you could attack them. And finally there were massacres. Even if you didn’t perform massacres and you knew about it and didn’t say something, you were a partner. These were gradual steps, and those people who performed these massacres, for them it was a natural thing after this development. It’s very important to watch these changes very closely. Not to compare it, but I was shocked a couple of months ago when suddenly there’s this discussion of torture in the States. Some were saying water boarding was okay in some circumstances. Then there was a new name for torture, “Innovative methods of interrogation.” I was raised watching US cop shows and even the meanest criminals gets his rights read, which was very impressive for me. Suddenly all these people are okay with torturing Arabs. If you proceed in this direction you can gradually lose your basic rights.

LAJ: On a lighter note, what did it mean to receive an Oscar nomination?
Ruzowitzky: The Academy is a big group with some of the most accomplished filmmakers, actors and craftsman. If these people say this is one of the finest movies of the year that means a lot.

LAJ: Lastly, what does it mean to you discuss your work and yourself? Does it serve the work? Should the work speak for itself?
Ruzowitzky: Of course the work should speak for itself. When the movie’s released many people will see it without my presence, explaining things. Still it’s very helpful as a filmmaker how audiences react and see the film. I learn from speaking to journalists like you. I’m not a director who says, “I’m an artist and what I’m doing is art. Love it or leave it.”