I thought The Counterfeiters was solid enough but mostly conventional. It's less mawkish than the weakest aspects of Life is Beautiful (and good god, it's light years better than Tsotsi), but the treatment felt overly familiar when, as you say, the material is anything but. (There's even a sequence lifted directly from Schindler's List.) It's not a bad film, but given the bevy of popular choices left off the ballot, it's still a bummer of a winner in this category.
That being said, thank god it triumphed over Beaufort, the only other film I've seen in this category. Here's a film about the boredom of waiting during war...that is a complete and total snooze that ultimately amounts to nothing.
Best Foreign Language Film
Saw The Counterfeiters today, and it's good. The lead is played by an actor (a good actor) who would've been cast as one of the Nazis by almost any other director. August Diehl, in a supporting/second-lead role is excellent--he has the charisma (and probably the looks, although it's hard to tell here) to be a breakout star. The music was god-awful. Somehow, as well made and well acted as it is, it never quite grabbed me the way it should have, and probably was meant to; scenes towards the end (two in particular) that were probably meant to be devastating didn't quite hit me on that level.
I don't want to undersell it, because it has a lot of good qualities, and anyone interested in history (especially Holocaust) will be fascinated, as I was, by a Holocaust story that tells a story that you probably haven't heard about. As far as recent foreign film winners go, it's a cut below The Lives of Others, but miles and miles ahead of Tsotsi.
I don't want to undersell it, because it has a lot of good qualities, and anyone interested in history (especially Holocaust) will be fascinated, as I was, by a Holocaust story that tells a story that you probably haven't heard about. As far as recent foreign film winners go, it's a cut below The Lives of Others, but miles and miles ahead of Tsotsi.
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