Defiance (DVD)
APPROX. 136 MINS. - PROD. YEAR: 2008 - MPA RATING: R
" A story that ought to be heartbreaking and ennobling comes across as little more than ordinary.
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You would think that having a real-life World War II story of heroism and self-sacrifice starring Daniel Craig and Liev Schreiber and directed by Edward Zwick ("Glory," "The Last Samurai," "Blood Diamond") might ensure a great movie. However, things are not always as they appear. The 2008 release "Defiance" strives so hard to be earnest, truthful, and authentic that it tends to scrub away some of its human touch. It's a story that ought to be heartbreaking and ennobling, yet much of it comes across as little more than ordinary.
"1941: Germany occupies Belorussia. SS death squads and local police round up Jews. Within weeks 50,000 are murdered. 1,000,000 more await deportation and death."
Craig and Schreiber play brothers, Tuvia and Zus Bielski, Russian Jews who lose their father and their farm to the Nazis. Together with their younger brothers, Asael and Aron (Jamie Bell and George MacKay), they retreat to the surrounding forest they know well, where they hide out and plot what next to do. There in the forest they find numerous other refugees hiding out, huddling together, and looking for direction. The Bielskis reluctantly choose to lead them, like Moses in the desert, and help them pull through. The group become criminals, hunted by the Germans, and resistance fighters, stealing what they need to get along and killing whatever Nazis they can. As time goes on, their numbers swell.
Tuvia becomes their commander, but inevitable sibling rivalry rears its head, and the two brothers eventually separate, Zus, the wilder and more headstrong brother, joining a unit of the Russian army fighting in the woods. While Tuvia wants mainly to keep the community alive and well ("Our revenge is to live"), Zus wants more tangible results. He mainly wants revenge, to kill Germans, so it would appear that both brothers get what they need.
The story unfolds rather simply, with Tuvia leading the refugees-turned-fighters from camp to camp through the Russian forests, and Zus doing his best to live with the anti-Jewish prejudice among the Russian soldiers in his unit. (Officially, under Communism at the time, all comrades were equal, but in reality not even Communism could destroy old hatreds.)
"Defiance" tells a sad and harrowing tale, made all the more affecting for having really happened. We expect to find little joy in the narrative, yet that may be the film's undoing; it's so unrelentingly grim. I mean, you've got hundreds of people starving in the wilderness, surrounded by mass murderers dedicated to hunting them down and exterminating them. Yes, the heroism under such hardship is an inspiration, but understand that it's going to make for a largely depressing film, too. Then add in the film's extreme length, 136 minutes, and you get a fairly long haul.
Director Zwick does his best to stick to the facts and not add much in the way of extraneous melodrama to the story. This, too, has the effect of making the story seem more bleak and severe than he might otherwise have had it if, say, he gone the route of "The Great Escape," where the filmmakers dramatized their real-life story with equal shares of humor, excitement, and adventure. With "Defiance," the movie reminds one of an old black-and-white newsreel account of Nazi concentration camps and their sad-faced, emaciated victims, except that here the movie is in color, and we know in advance that most of the participants will pull through.
The leads are strong, as we might expect. Craig is at his steely-eyed, clench-jawed, tight-lipped best, and Schreiber is properly willful, obstinate, and obstreperous. They pretty much carry the picture, especially when they're on screen together. Nevertheless, the filmmakers never flesh out their personalities very well, leaving them closer to iconic symbols than living, breathing human beings. Likewise, the supporting characters are primarily representative types--the teacher, the intellectual, the philosopher, the clockmaker, the troublemaker, and such--rather than distinct individuals.
Be that as it may, even though the film is mostly somber, it's not that there aren't some tender moments in it; men and women living for years in the forest, you're going to get some touching relationships. Zwick juxtaposes such moments with scenes of intense violence to create the movie's most dramatic passages.
