DEFIANCE
The last in December's Oscar qualifying, Holocaust dramas is Defiance, an amazing and heretofore unfilmed story of a Jewish partisan community. The Bielski's were real life brothers living in Belarus who, because of their reputation as scrappy fighters were targeted by the SS when the Germans invaded the Russian controlled region in 1941. After the massacre that took the lives of their parents, and Tuvia's wife and child in the Novogrudok ghetto, they escaped to the woods near their farm. Eventually, they accumulated more than 1,500 people, people who wandered in, as well as people they liberated from the ghetto. While moving several times over the couse of 3 years, they forged a makeshift village with hospital, mill, bakery and synagogue. There were other "otriads" scattered throughout Eastern Europe, as they were called, but the Bielski's was by far the largest. Eventually the two surviving brothers made their way to the United States, settling in New York.
Screenwriter Clay Frohman came upon a book called Defiance written in 1993 by Dr. Nechama Tee, which was the first comprehensive study of Jewish resistance. Dr, Tee had interviewed many survivors of these communities, including Tuvia Bielski shortly before his death in 1987. After reading the book, Frohman, immediately set out to portray another story besides the familiar ones of suffering and annihilation, or of rescue by helpful Germans like Oskar Schindler.
Daniel Craig plays the reluctant Jewish superhero of the saga, Tuvia Bielski who joins his two brother Zus (Liev Schreiber) and Asael (Jamie Bell) in the woods upon learning of the Nazi invasion and subsequent massacre. Their immediate impulse is revenge but as more and more groups of people join them in the woods, their mission becomes one of managing a community. At one point Zus does heads off to fight alongside the Russians, partly as a result, it seems, of tension and competition between the two oldest brothers. Tuvia remains, becoming a sort of dictator, while also finding companionship with his "forest wife" Lilka (Alexa Davalos) who he stayed with for the rest of his life.
The film moves between the action of fighting and resisting, including raids on farms and villages and the examination of the various relationships that are forged between the partisans including a lovely bond between two intellectuals who suddenly feel valueless, Shimon Haretz (Allan Corduner) and Isaac Malbin (Mark Feurerstein) but play an important part in the survival of the community. Shot in Vilnius, Lithuania (because Belarus is currently a dictatorship), the extraordinary forest setting demonstrates the monumental task that was undertaken. The Production Designer Dan Weil built the forest camp nail by nail, as was actually done, even digging out the underground bunkers. For the most part, the film was shot entirely outdoors during damp cold and snow and freezing Baltic rain.
I always commend Edward Zwick for taking on socially significant topics in films like Blood Diamond and Glory. At the same time, I am always aware of his fondness for the mechanisms of melodrama. Once again here, he sets out to make an exciting action-based drama, which this certainly is, peppering it with unnecessary embellishment, for example, crosscutting between Asael's wedding to Chaya (Mia Wasikowska) and Zus' battle against the Germans. Things like this only remind me of D.W. Griffith, screaming Hollywood while removing me from a really compelling story.
As I have commented in earlier Holocaust related reviews, I consider myself well versed on the period and the films. It seems that filmmakers will continue to struggle to make sense of it, uncovering more and more stories, even false ones (see the recent false memoir scandal). It is essential to complicate the dominate picture by offering something other than evil Germans and helpless Jews -- let fail to recognize our own moral complexity. But in the enthusiasm to tell the important, factual story, subtlety is often sacrificed.
I understand the demands of mass culture when it comes to visual storytelling and therefore see why directors and producers continue to play it safe by mashing this fascinating story into a very recognizable action/drama form. Nonetheless, I am so glad this story was told, and urge people to see it. I just wish I hadn't been quite so directed as to what to think and what to feel. I, perhaps like the Bielski's, naturally resist authority, which means when it comes to a film like this, although intellectually and historically it moved me, the emotional connection was somewhat less satisfying.
Defiance opens December 31, 2008.
Directed by Edward Zwick; written by Clay Frohman and Edward Zwick, based upon the book Defiance by Dr. Nechama Tee; produced by Edward Zwick and Pieter Jan Brugge; director of photography, Eduardo Serra; edited by Steven Rosenblum, production designer, Dan Weil; costume designer, Jenny Beavan; music by James Newton Howard; violin solos by Joshua Bell.
With: Daniel Crag (Tuvia Bielski), Liev Schrieber(Zus Bielski), Jamie Bell (Asael Bielski), Alexa Davalos (Lilka Ticktin), Alan Corduner (Shimon Haretz), Marc Feuerstein (Isaac Malbin), Iben Hjelje (Bella), and Mia Wasikowska (Chaya).
