2009, Directed by Zack Snyder

Based on the highly acclaimed graphic novel by Alan Moore, Watchmen is a story made to show superheroes be in the real world. Superheroes have been a constant target of Moore’s satire and venom. Influenced by Anarchism, Moore sees the superheroes as combinations of lonely, pathetic, psychotic, paternalistic, self-indulgent and fascist. These consistently brilliant comic’s are not just an attack on a pernicious form of culture, but an insightful metaphor about those that would claim to lead us within the current capitalist system. Politicians, generals, priests, media moguls and union bureaucrats can all be read into the cast of powerful characters that Moore has created over the years. The Watchmen graphic novel stands at the apex of this important body of work.

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The Counterfeiters is a fictionalised account of an astonishing true story: Nazi Germany’s Operation Bernhard, the largest counterfeiting undertaking in history. The operation forced Jewish concentration camp prisoners to produce forged banknotes, passports and even postage stamps for the benefit of the Third Reich.

The movie is based on the memoirs of one of the participants, Adolf Burger. A communist printer, Burger urges his fellow inmates to sabotage the project of forging the American Dollar, in order to undermine the Nazi war effort.

The central character is a professional forger, Saloman Solowich. In the early scenes of the film we see, Solowich, “the most charming scoundrel in Berlin”, quaffing Champagne in the bohemian decadence of Weimar Germany. When he ends up in a concentration camp, his strategy is simple: adapt and survive. [Read more…]