………Films about World War II are a staple of European cinema, so much that justification might be required for releasing another one. Fortunately, The Forger easily passes muster by setting itself not in the familiar foreground of the war but deep in the background of 1942 Berlin, where some .……..Jews, such as the main character Cioma Schonhausen (upon whose memoirs the film is based), still live in the city by holding down factory jobs. Other Jews, such as Cioma’s close friend Dev, simply keep a low profile but others, such as the girl Cioma falls in love with, are involved in more complex charades. Gradually, Cioma himself, given his graphic design skills, becomes a document forger and his work in this profession drives the plot for the remainder of the movie. Ultimately, it is less the actual practice of forgery that resonates here but the broader philosophic concept of creating and maintaining a saleable identity that not only enhances your life but can even save it.
……….. In Nazi Germany, as the film shows, everyone’s identity is precarious and must be actively shored up in a practice that Cioma calls mimicry: as long as you can mimic an identity favourable to the Nazi state, you can survive. Particularly interesting is the circumstance of women, required to manage their true feelings as they manipulate the system, as illustrated by Cioma’s landlady, Mrs. Peters, who basically steals Cioma’s mother’s belongings then risks helping him obtain an ID card he can forge, and by Cioma’s girlfriend, caught in a dizzying series of revolving doors as she moves among her soldier fiancé ,a number of “dates”, and Cioma.
……….The film is set mostly indoors, but is claustrophobic by necessity, given the situation and the colours are drab, given the mood, but up-tempo jazz music of the period evokes Cioma’s refusal to be defeated. The pace in the first half of the film is a bit slow and perhaps too frantic in the second half, but Cioma (a strong performance by Louis Hofman) carries us through with his will to be himself in the artificial world of Nazi Germany.
