Reviewed
by Lamar Kukuk
1/20/09
I was
tickled once by a Stephen King comment about people watching The Passion
of the Christ like it was the Zapruder Film, but it is easy to get
caught up in the notion that when you watch a historical film, you are
watching history. I try to always do at least some historical research
after seeing a film to make sure I can sort Hollywood invention from reality.
Even so, I have to say I felt a little bad about just how bored I was by
Edward Zwick's Defiance, an inert, bone-dry filming of an amazing
true story.
1941:
Germans seize Belarus (it was actually called Poland at the time, thanks
Wikipedia!) and begin rounding up or outright killing Jewish citizens.
Upon finding their parents killed at the family farm, the Bielski brothers,
smugglers by trade, do what they always do when the police threaten:
they retreat into the woods nearby. The brothers, oldest to youngest,
are Tuvia (Daniel Craig), Zus (Liev Schreiber), Asael (Jamie Bell) and
young Aron (George McKay) (in reality, Asael was older than Zus, thanks
Wikipedia!). While the Bielskis are far better equipped to survive
than their neighbors, they are not the only Jews to seek refuge in the
woods, and they just keep happening upon people asking for help.
Among them, Tuvia's old teacher Shamon Haretz (Allan Corduner), “intellectual”
Isaac Malbin (Mark Feuerstein), refugee Lilka (Alexa Davalos) and a mother
(Iben Hjejle) and daughter (Mia Wasikowska) who attract the attention of
Zus and Asael, respectively. At first, the Bielskis are driven by
revenge, striking back at those who killed their parents and neighbors,
but soon it becomes clear that feeding their growing community has to be
the priority. As word spreads, more and more refugees join them,
but Zus becomes jealous of Tuvia's fame as their leader and joins the Russian
partisans who share the Bielskis' woods. As Tuvia battles illness,
starvation and rebellion within his ranks, it's only a matter of time before
the Nazis close in.
As
you might imagine, the real life Bielski brothers were as ruthless as they
were humanitarian: Zus once killed one of his own men for leaving
civilians behind to be killed by the Germans while on a raiding party (thanks,
Wikipedia!). But Zwick, whose The Last Samurai and Blood
Diamond oozed macho sentimentality, goes the Lifetime root in telling
this story. The amount of screen time devoted to sick characters
coughing and starving is astonishing given how many of the film's key events
occur off-screen. It's the kind of movie where Tuvia's illness clears
up on the first day of Spring and where a community ban on pregnancies
is challenged by a girl who 1)before she arrived 2)was raped 3)by a Nazi.
The tension between Tuvia and Zus is interesting, as is later friction
between the leader and a thug who wants to take over, but Zwick spends
most of his time side-stepping tension so he can lean on suffering.
And all of the movie's romances are non-starters.
While
all the performances are sincere, few of them really pop. Schreiber
has the meatiest role because Zus thinks of himself and his lust for revenge
at least as much as others, and he feels most consistently like a real
person. And both Corduner and Feuerstein shine as the conscience
of the camp. Craig sets a baseline of saintly suffering and rides
it from beginning to end. Bell's role calls primarily for reaction
shots and none of the women's roles involve more than standing out from
the crowd (Hjejle does have a nice mercenary vibe).
Reading
the oft-mentioned Wikipedia
piece of the Bielski partisans, I'm taken with how many interesting
facts Defiance passed over or changed in a less compelling direction.
In fact, the closing crawls even go so far as to inform us that the story
got more interesting after the movie ends. At its' height, the secret
traveling community started by the Bielskis numbered over 1,200 people,
the descendants of whom now number in the tens of thousands. Great,
amazing story. The movie version? Not so much. |
