And Along Come Tourists; The Counterfeiters.

Two intelligent films screened at TIFF 2007 approach history through the conventions of narrative film. One, a German production directed by Robert Thalheim And Along Come Tourists, poses the problem of remembering history through a contemporary story about a young man from Berlin who has been assigned to work at the museum on the site of Auschwitz, as part of his civil service requirements. The Counterfeiters, an Austrian production directed by Stefan Ruzowitzky, dramatizes an historical episode entitled Operation Bernhard, wherein a select group of Jewish concentration camp prisoners were assembled in Sachsenhausen and forced to produce counterfeit British pounds and American dollars. The Nazis plotted to use the money to replace their depleted funds and flood the Allied markets with this cash in order to weaken and defeat their enemies in the latter stages of the war.

Spielberg's Schindler's List was a watershed film that ignited much debate about the problems of representing history through the medium of mainstream cinema. Do generic conventions, character identification, the demands of narrative resolution and the promise of pleasure and entertainment compromise historical authenticity? Can the experience of incarceration in a concentration camp, one that arguably challenges the limits of not only representation but imagination, be recreated on a set with actors? Claude Lanzmann, for example, renounces both the use of fictional dramatization as well as archival footage, opting instead to recreate history in the present in his monumental film Shoah. The difficulty of finding appropriate and meaningful ways to evoke memory, respect the truth of an event and keep it relevant to future generations remains a challenge. And Along Come Tourists centres itself directly on this problem. What is the meaning of Auschwitz today? How does one address this history, talk about it, and teach it with the urgency it deserves? The German title, Am Ende Kommen Touristen, more accurately conveys the meaning that ultimately tourists come. Auschwitz today is a curiosity, a tourist site that is beyond comprehension, even beyond believability and the museum's reverential but schematic and reductive approach to history, summed up in the post-tour discussion where students are asked to choose the most affecting exhibit, fails to make it vital to the young visitors obliged to come on a school outing. Krzeminski/ Ryszard Ronczewski, a survivor of the camp who has remained at the site to act as a witness to the events that took place in Auschwitz, sums up the problem of communication with the young people whom he meets by claiming that he cannot offer what Schindler's List does.

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The Counterfeiters is an absorbing drama that raises some very important issues relevant to a contemporary world tilted towards conflagration. In the midst of a disaster does one act to protect oneself and survive, which is what the hero Sally/Karl Markovics does (even if it means collaborating with the enemy) or sacrifice one's life for a greater good, for principles and ideals, as advocated by the ideologue Burger/August Diehl? This is a quandary that has its generic antecedents in the 'commitment' film of the forties, and in many ways, The Counterfeiters draws from this genre. Interestingly, the existential question of how to behave ethically in the midst of a catastrophe is in the current zeitgeist, and is raised in another recent Austrian film, Michael Haneke's le temps du loup/ The Time of the Wolf which is set in a contemporary world but evokes at times, what has been termed the 'concentrationary universe'. His film is about a family trying to survive in the aftermath of a disaster which has created a shortage of fuel, electricity and water. Haneke's project is very different (it is a fiction and not based on any actual event) but he in no way attempts to entertain or assuage his audience, which may in part account for the film's lack of popular appeal. Haneke pointedly undermines the expectations of the traditional narrative; instead of a hero figure, identification slowly shifts from the parents (the father is killed shockingly in the opening scene) to the children (who are the least empowered). Haneke avoids the problem of compromising the subject to make it agreeable to the demands of narrative art that entertains by ordering disorder or finding an uplifting ending as does Schindler's List and The Counterfeiters. The director, Ruzowitzky is aware of this dilemma. In the film's press kit he states:

  For a present-day audience, an angry "That's how it was!" is no longer
  enough. We have to talk about the Holocaust and have a moral
  obligation to do so in a way that reaches as many viewers as possible.
  So, yes, a film about the Holocaust should be exciting and
  entertaining in the best sense of the word. And The Counterfeiters is
  also an entertaining film. But I would also like to say that I would
  never have dared to depict the everyday horror of a 'normal'
  concentration camp.

Here the director is claiming to want it all--respect the difficulty of depicting ordinary life in the camps (the film mostly avoids this by focusing on the special block set up for the counterfeiters which enjoyed more privileges and was thus anomalous to life in Sachsenhausen) while delivering a film that is "exciting and entertaining", and provides a happy ending, which is what The Counterfeiters does.

Like Schindler's List, The Counterfeiters is centred on a suave antihero, a character on the edges of society. Salomon Sorowitsch,' Sally', is based on a person who existed (Salomon Smolianoff) but he is also rooted in myth. He lives for the moment and can be compared to a Bogart character from To Have and Have Not or Casablanca. One can almost expect him to utter one of Bogart's lines. What are his sympathies? "Minding my own business". Sally's background is not quite legitimate (we see him in a Weimar bar frequented by the criminal world of Berlin); he is successful with women (his one mistake that results in his arrest is lingering with a beautiful woman until morning) and is a pragmatic survivor. There is a deliberate mysteriousness that envelops the character. The film begins with Sally arriving at an elegant hotel in Monte Carlo still dressed in his shabby camp survivor clothing. His cool, measured actions and demeanor, and his suitcase full of cash precede the flashback structure that explains where Sally has been. It assures the audience that the hero not only survives but remains intact. Sally's night of gambling ends with him in bed with a woman (a recurring motif) and her notice of the number tattooed on his arm begins the flashback. The first camp Sally is sent to after his arrest is Mauthausen and he establishes his hero cachet by confronting a brutal SS guard(or 'kapo') whom a fellow prisoner has advised him to avoid, and ends up protecting himself by using his artistic skills to paint heroic murals of the Nazi SS in the camp. When Sally is transferred to Sachsenhausen he meets the officer who initially arrested him in Berlin, Herzog/Devid Striesow, who now is a kommandant of the camp, in charge of the counterfeiting workshop. Herzog and Sally develop a symbiotic relationship where each needs the other for their individual ends, Sally to survive in a degree of comfort and security and Herzog to ensure that his counterfeit monies are produced. The group is privileged to actual beds with linens, the men are relatively well fed, allowed to listen to music while they work and are occasionally rewarded with soirees or the gift of a ping pong table; the reality of Sachsenhausen is distilled into screams or shots heard off screen, outside the barracks. The cruelties of the Nazis intrude through the second in command, but overall the sense is that a degree of order and safety can be maintained under Sally's leadership and skills at mediation. Sally is challenged by Burger, a Communist who is principled and refuses to coopt and comply in exchange for his safety. His argument, that it is immoral to abet the Nazis through the production of currency, is undermined by his stridency and his questionable motives--his wife is incarcerated in Auschwitz and Burger's option to die for a cause may, in part, be fuelled by despair. Sally resists Burger's demands and tries to mediate between Burger's sabotaging the production and Herzog's impatience. Ultimately, Sally does the right thing and, like a Bogart hero, his actions are more a result of personal commitment to an individual as opposed to a cause. It is after his protege/friend Kolya is shot, and terms of an agreement he thought he had made with Herzog have been broken, that Sally begins to change. When the counterfeit workers are liberated they are confronted and threatened by a group of starving camp inmates who have not been as privileged. They are, from Sally and his co-workers' point of view and thus from the audience's, completely unknowable. The film ends with Sally, back in the present, in the casino dressed in evening wear. Sally spends the night winning at the gambling tables and then returns his winnings by intentionally losing. The house acknowledges this and thanks him with a bottle of champagne and Sally retires with his beautiful companion and dances with her on the beach. The final shot is intentionally stylized, as a happy ending.

The Counterfeiters is blessed with a very strong cast, particularly in the performances of Sally, Burger and the young artist Kolya. It is, as the director intended, "exciting and entertaining" and intelligently directed, but it does tend to empty out history and replace it with myth in the process. Camp life was perhaps not so bad, Herzog the kommandant was not so bad, Sally bears no scars, and the film creates a hero who is impervious to disaster.

And Along Come Tourists uses its young protagonist to think about the meaning of Auschwitz in the present, instead of using Auschwitz as a backdrop to a story about a young German's difficulties acclimatizing to the civil service duties assigned him in Poland. The relationships that develop are tentative, as is the ending. Sven/ Alexander Fehling doesn't achieve much concretely; instead, the character is used to observe and reflect upon the issues the film raises regarding the problem of conservation and memorialization.

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The narrative begins with the arrival of Sven, a German student who has come to volunteer at the museum at Auschwitz. Except for a young translator/tour guide named Ania/ Barbara Wysocka whom he meets, no one is particularly friendly or interested in his arrival in the town and some, like Ania's brother, are overtly hostile to a German in Poland. The director of the museum and youth centre seems almost annoyed to be saddled with Sven and neglects to find him suitable accommodations or work. He gives him the job of assisting, but more precisely shadowing, Krzeminski, an elderly survivor of the camps who lives and works on the premises and assigns Sven to share his flat. Krzeminski's job is repairing the suitcases that are the remnants of the millions who were killed at the camp. Krzeminski is irritated by Sven's appointment to watch over him and resents Sven's presence as it makes him feel increasingly useless and a burden, as if he too has been reduced to a relic that needs tending. Krzeminski's approach to conservation clashes with that of the younger academics who believe in conserving the suitcases in their state of disrepair, freezing them in time for the didactic purposes of the museum display. Krzeminski's repairs are a form of renewal that extends beyond preservation. His motives are more complex--it is almost a duty to their former owners as the suitcases are the remaining evidence of their lives. Krzeminski's commitment is to those individuals and a culture that once existed while the conservationists' obligation is to the object. He is later barred from renewing the suitcases and Sven, realizing how misdirected this is, and protective of Krzeminski's feelings, steals some for him to work on in protest. When Krzeminski's sister discusses his leaving the site and living with her his reluctance to do so seems linked to the sense of obligation he has which is, for him, integral to the place of Auschwitz.

Krzeminski also attends question and answer sessions with student visitors but they are uninterested and at times suspicious and almost skeptical of his testimony as an eyewitness. One asks him" What did you eat?" and he answers, "Everything and nothing". One asks to see the prisoner I.D. number tattooed on his arm and then wonders why it has faded. "I haven't had it renewed recently", Krzeminski answers sardonically as the comment implies disbelief. They can't communicate with him as his experience is too strange and beyond comprehension and they question the veracity of his testimony. The scene of their discussion takes place on the site of Auschwitz in the presence of an eyewitness, yet it is still insufficient and unconvincing to the young reluctant visitors, and thus raises the problem of keeping collective memory alive. The witnesses and the evidence are fading as is the public regard for the event.

When a German chemical company decides to build a chemical plant in Oswiecim, the town of Auschwitz, they are obliged to address the terrible irony of Germans planning to produce chemicals on the site of the camp where chemicals were integral to the killing process; they compensate for this by dedicating a small memorial before building begins and invite Krzeminski to speak. Krzeminski's presentation continues beyond what the officials deem appropriate and he is hurried off stage. The offer was to acknowledge the past in a cursory way without actually talking about it. The casting of Lena Stolze of The Nasty Girl as the rude factory representative is significant given her acclaimed role in the film as a woman who forces memory onto a town reluctant to address the past.

Sven's relationship with Ania (he eventually rents a space in her flat) allows him a closer glimpse of the lives of young people of his generation in the Polish town. They are already second generation post-war, and they seem angry, bored or detached from the inherited history of their town. Ania feels trapped and is most anxious to leave when the first opportunity to do so arises and start a life elsewhere. Her brother and his friends are part of an industrial rock band whose music, and their time spent getting drunk, expresses the nihilistic rage and apathy of their peers. Ania is angered and offended when Sven confronts her about her detachment from the history of her surroundings. She takes Sven on a picnic and bicycle ride through Monowitz, the site of the satellite camps that were part of the Auschwitz complex, and her seeming ability to enjoy a picnic on these grounds surprises Sven and moves him to question her relationship to the history of the place. She counters by asking Sven of his identity as a German and his obligation to these events. Sven never does feel comfortable or a part of the youth of Oswiecim and only finally attempts to join them in their drinking/ dancing/ music rites when he feels overwhelmed and lonely; He tries participating when he feels beaten towards the end of the film. His only friend Ania is leaving, Krzeminski has been unofficially retired from his duties at the museum and his role as witness is not valued; Sven learns that one cannot easily safeguard history and force others to appreciate its importance, particularly when they feel disconnected and unwilling to struggle with its meaning. He realizes that a tourist site is not the same as a memorial site, and he despairs about this. Although Sven has packed to leave he decides finally to stay on at the museum. It is a statement about his commitment to trying to use the didactic potential of the museum to engage students and visitors and encourage them to think about the continuing relevance of Auschwitz.

And Along Come Tourists is a remarkably intelligent, however modest, film that raises profound questions about collective memory and history. Given the rise of right-wing populist parties in Austria, Poland and elsewhere in Europe and around the world, the opportunity to use art to address this history seems particularly crucial.