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Cinema
by
Leonard Heldreth
Music examined from opposite spectrums
The films this month feature two bands and a counterfeiting ring
in a concentration camp, but not all in the same film.
The Band’s Visit
This joint Egyptian Israeli production opens with a shot of an airport
van. The driver moves a large yellow ball from the back of the van
into the front, closes the door and drives away while the camera remains
focused where the van has been.
On the sidewalk behind the space formerly occupied by the van stand
eight men, mostly middle-aged or older, in blue uniforms with gold
braid and blue hats; they are staring at the camera and holding musical
instrument cases. These men are the Alexandria Ceremonial Police Orchestra,
and they have come to Israel to help open an Arab cultural center.
This opening shot—so mundane, so confused and so dryly humorous—sets
the tone for a unique, almost sweet movie that makes its points without
choosing political sides, preaching about intolerance or otherwise
beating the audience about the head. As an opening prologue makes
clear, this incident is forgotten easily and the band has little significance;
and even though those words describe the lives most of us lead, we
still would not want to have missed them. This film is also not to
be missed.
The band’s welcoming committee has not met them at the airport
for reasons unknown, and Tewfig (Sasson Gabai), the ranking officer,
decides to try to find the town of Pet Hatikvah, where they are scheduled
to play the next day. He sends the youngest member of the band, Khaled
(Saleh Bakri), to determine what bus will take them to where they
want to go (most of the communication between the band members and
their Israeli hosts takes place in broken English). A few hours later,
they dismount from a bus in a barren town in the middle of a desert,
where wind blows dust and the people look as bored as it’s possible
to be and yet not leave. When they inquire at a ramshackle restaurant
where the Arab cultural center is, the owner, Dina (Ronit Elkabetz)
assures them, “There is no Arab culture here; there is no Israeli
culture here; there is no culture of any kind here.”
It is, of course, the wrong town (it’s Bet Hatikvah), the next
bus doesn’t arrive until tomorrow and there is no hotel. But
that’s OK, as far as the locals are concerned; they’re excited
to have a diversion of any kind and forget about cultural conflicts.
The movie really begins at this point, and its focus is on the interactions
between the three groups of band members and the people at the restaurant
who let them sleep at their homes overnight. Tewfig and Haled stay
with Dina; three members stay with a young man who takes them home
to stay at the apartment he shares with his wife, in-laws and children;
the others stay with other restaurant staff or visitors. Dina takes
Tewfig to a nearby bar for a drink and some food; she obviously is
attracted to him, despite the differences in their age; he is too
withdrawn to respond to her, although he finally confesses what has
driven him into his shell. Haled inveigles an Israeli teen to take
him along on a roller-skating date, and he slowly teaches the young
man how to treat his girlfriend. Haled has the best lines as he remarks
about how his band uniform looks a little like something Michael Jackson
would wear; he also keeps trying to pick up girls by asking them if
they know Chet Baker and “My Funny Valentine”—which
they usually don’t. Perhaps the funniest scene is a sing-along
of Gershwin’s “Summertime,” in which Israelis and Egyptians
sing the lyrics together in English.
The film is humorous, but also touching, for it becomes clear that
all of the people are living lives of quiet desperation—Dina,
stuck in a remote town where she is desperate for some excitement
and male companionship; Tewfig, worn out by trying to deal with the
guilt of his past and to keep the band going, Haled bored out of his
skull from traveling around with a group of men all old enough to
be his father, and so forth.
The acting is excellent throughout, especially from Gabai and Elkabetz.
The script is clever, the visuals emphasize the isolation of the setting
and the individuals, and there’s not a mean-spirited scene in
the film. Don’t expect a lot of slapstick or action, but the
film and its characters are fascinating from start to finish. The
film won numerous awards but, although it’s in Arabic, English
and Hebrew, with English subtitles, it was disqualified from contention
for the Best Foreign Language Film because of its high percentage
of English. Top
The Counterfeiters
After leaving the Sachsenhausen concentration camp in 1945, Adolph
Burger went back to work as a printer and said nothing about his experiences
in the Nazi forced-labor facility.
Only years later, when he became aware of the holocaust denial groups,
did he decide to set down what had happened to him. He wrote his account,
The Devil’s Workshop, and gave illustrated talks about his experiences.
When Austrian writer/director Stefan Ruzowitzky wanted to base a film
on the book, Burger agreed to help with the script because he knew
that through the film he could reach millions of people instead of
the hundreds he had been able to reach through his talks. The film
won the Oscar for Best Foreign Film.
Many people have seen so many films about the concentration camps
they do not look forward to another grueling depiction of the horrors
the Jews and other persecuted minorities experienced there. The Counterfeiters,
however, explores this area from an unusual historic angle.
From 1942 until the end of the war, the Nazis used Jewish forced labor
at Sachsenhausen to set up and operate the largest counterfeiting
operation in history, producing passports, identity papers, securities
and cash—especially British pounds and American dollars. To staff
“Operation Bernhard,” as it was called, the Germans brought
in the best engravers, printers and counterfeiters from concentration
camps throughout their area of control. They housed them in a special
section of the camp where the inmates were given good food, adequate
clothing, medical attention, soft beds and other amenities (even a
ping-pong table) that were denied the people being killed systematically
in other parts of the camp.
In return, the inmates labored to produce financial resources that
fed the Nazi war machine and undermined the economies of England and
the United States. By the end of the war, “Operation Bernhard”
had produced 130 million pounds in British notes so perfect that even
the Bank of England declared them to be authentic. There is little
doubt the group would have been equally successful in flooding the
world’s economy with fake dollars if the war had not ended when
it did.
The film opens in Monte Carlo at the end of the war and then flashes
back to 1936 when master counterfeiter Salomon Sorowitsch (Karl Markovics)
is arrested in his Berlin apartment by Inspector Friedrich Herzog
(Devid Striesow) after “Sally” has dallied too long with
a beautiful woman. Sent to Mauthausen concentration camp where he
must wear a green Star of David that identifies him not only as a
Jew but also a criminal, he uses his artistic talents to help him
survive until Herzog, now the commander of Sachsenhausen, brings him
to the camp to work in counterfeiting.
Several moral conflicts occur. Perhaps the least important of these,
as far as history is concerned, is the scruples the honest Jews felt
over their participation in the counterfeiting operation. A more important
conflict occurs because the work they do supports and advances the
government that is oppressing them. Last, and personally important
to them, is the conflict they feel over their special treatment while
outside the walls of their compound they can hear fellow prisoners
screaming and being tortured and shot. For Sorowitsch, these conflicts
at first affect him very little: a professional criminal, he is used
to surviving and doing whatever is necessary to provide a good life
for himself.
Over time, however, events change him somewhat, and he turns a blind
eye toward the other inmates’ attempts at sabotaging and delaying
the success of the operation. As a result, only a relatively small
number of dollars is produced by the end of the war. We do not find
out much about Sorowitsch’s life after the war. Adolph Burger
(August Diehl) is a secondary character in the film and not as interesting
because he is not as conflicted. The acting is fine, generally, and
the sets and photography are quite acceptable.
Burger, now in his nineties but still very sharp, is interviewed on
the DVD. He acknowledges that everything in the film is not true because
he knew the film had to be dramatic. If there is a problem with the
script, however, it is because the film is not dramatic enough. The
turning points of the decisions and of the conflicts within the men
are mostly internal, as they have to be, but sometimes external events
can serve as emblems of internal changes. Further, the liberation
of the camps occurs before the Germans can become completely aware
of the sabotage. Last, the closing book-end scenes with Sorowitsch
appear arbitrary, rather than based on an observable change.
Nonetheless, The Counterfeiters is a gripping story of both external
conflicts and moral dilemmas, one that highlights a different aspect
of the Nazi concentration camps. It’s clearly a low-budget film,
but its subject material and superlative acting make up for any deficiencies.
It is in German, with English subtitles. Top
Shine a Light
This column opened with a film about a self-described, nearly forgotten
event concerning an insignificant band, and it ends with a film about
the best-known band in the world (who are, by the way, referenced
in the first film).
Back in 1978, Martin Scorsese directed the filmed version of The Band’s
last concert, entitled The Last Waltz. Nearly thirty years later,
he has directed, at their request, a filmed version of a Rolling Stones
concert. Whether this will be the Stones’ last tour is not clear:
they aren’t saying, and the evidence onstage is that they might
go on forever.
Scorsese employed eighteen cameras and several first-rate photographers
over two nights to capture the Stones performing at New York’s
Beacon Theater in the fall of 2006. The result is over two hours of
a cinematic “greatest hits” compilation with superb sound
and video that brings the audience much closer to the performers than
the theater audience ever could get. If you like the Stones, you’ll
want to see this.
On the positive side, the Stones are as full of energy and bounce
as ever. On the negative side, it’s the same energy and bounce
that we’ve heard before. Even the addition of guests Jack White,
Christina Aguilera and blues guitarist Buddy Guy, while interesting,
fail to jazz things up much. This is simply the Stones, doing what
they do best—singing and playing rock ’n’ roll.
Also on the positive side, Scorsese’s cameras and direction interfere
very little with the show, while bringing the viewer up close and
personal. Bill and Hillary Clinton make an appearance, since it was
a fundraiser for charity, and it’s amusing to see Jagger talk
to them while Keith Richards sits in the back and plays with his guitar
and smiles to himself.
Jagger still is the centerpiece of the show, and at sixty-three, he
struts, waves his arms, wiggles his butt and bares his tight midriff
with the best of them. It’s clear that a life of sex, drugs and
rock ’n’ roll is remarkably preservative. Of course, when
the spotlight hits him wrong, the cords in his lean face and physique
make him look a bit like an animated zombie, but at least he’s
animated—singing, running and dancing at a time when most men
of his age feel good if they can handle a few holes of golf.
The voice is a bit harsher and less melodic, but it’s still there.
The biggest entrance is Jagger opening a door that pours forth in
red light at the back of the auditorium, and dancing down the aisle
to the woo-woo of “Sympathy for the Devil.”
Richards is the surprise. Resigned, he says, to being happy, he drifts
through the show with a beatific smile on his face. He says he feels
like he’s floating a foot above the floor when he’s on stage,
and he looks it. His face has not aged well; he could play the Mummy
virtually without makeup, but it would be a happy mummy. His voice
sounds better than Jagger’s, as he demonstrates in “You
Got the Silver.” He also does some interesting slides down to
the floor as he is playing and then, seemingly as effortlessly, slides
back up.
Ronnie Wood and Charlie Watts play their usual supporting roles, and
after one number, Watts looks at the camera and shakes the sweat from
his head, implying, “That’s hard work!” or “Not
bad for a man approaching seventy, eh?”
The current performance has clips from the Stones’ past. Most
amusing is one of Jagger, full-lipped and petulant in a flower-power
purple robe, after he has been released from drug charges. There’s
also a too obvious cut from Jagger in an interview in his twenties
saying he can see himself doing this into his sixties to a shot of
Jagger onstage at sixty-three. And so forth. Sometimes even Scorsese
takes the easy way out. It’s almost all good fun, with the Stones
at the top of their current form—it’s great sound, great
photography and a DVD with extra songs, including “Paint it Black.”
Top
—Leonard G. Heldreth
Editor’s Note: All films reviewed are available on DVD or VHS
from local stores. Reviews of earlier films cited can be found at
www.mmnow.com
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