Unbeugsam

I enjoyed "Defiance" immensely -- there was humor and heartache, with a liberal dose of action. Not a brainless action movie, enough of a story to make it memorable, and fast-paced enough to keep me from becoming bored.

On the other hand, although the movie captures the spirit of the story, it is far from a documentary, and I'd have preferred a more historically accurate film. I'm biased, though -- I read the Peter Duffy book "Bielski Brothers" soon after it was released ("Defiance" is based on a different book), and I found the real story even more compelling than the Hollywood version.

Nonetheless, I live in the real world where directors have to shoot on a budget, and this was a good, diverting peek into a story that was long overdue to be told.

"Defiance" is a very entertaining, exciting, suspenseful, and inspirational film about a tough topic: the Holocaust. Its many action sequences are well-paced and well-motivated. You know exactly why Tuvia Bielski (Daniel Craig) breaks into a home and points a gun at a man in front of his family. Daniel Craig and Live Schreiber are terrific as Tuvia and Zus Bielski, who lead a band of Jewish forest partisans during World War Two, thus saying over a thousand lives.

The movie is not perfect. Characters speak English with Slavic accents. In other scenes, they speak Russian or Belarusian. Craig and Schreiber manage very good Slavic accents, both when speaking English and when speaking the Slavic languages, but Craig occasionally lapses into his English accent when speaking English. Female characters are not particularly well drawn, or given much to do. While this film is very good, it doesn't have the production values to be a timeless classic like "Schindler's List." The movie is controversial. Most of the controversies are shallow relative to the most important facts at hand. Many of those attacking this movie have axes to grind, including current events in the Middle East or feuds between Poles and Jews. The most important fact is this: the Nazis committed a genocide of six million Jews. In the midst of this Satanic nightmare, the Bielskis managed to save over a thousand Jews. That's the main, and absolutely true, point here, and it should not be lost in bickering over details.

Compared to other treatments of the Holocaust, this film is fair. It doesn't show Slavic peasants as uniformly Jew-hating collaborators. Nazis, not Slavic peasants, were the authors and perpetrators of the Holocaust. Some occupied peoples collaborated, often out of fear and for financial gain or as payback for old grudges. Some occupied peoples did everything they could to help Jews, as does a Belarusian peasant in this film.

The Bielskis were not immaculate. They did summarily execute captured Germans, as shown here. They did raid peasants for provisions, as shown here. They did work with the Soviets, but so did Uncle Sam. Remember that photo of FDR and Churchill smiling with Stalin at Yalta. The Polish IPN institute is investigating charges that members of the Bielski partisans, but not the Bielskis themselves, participated in the 1943 Soviet massacre of 128 people in Naliboki. Aron, the youngest Bielski brother, was, in 2007, accused of defrauding an elderly Polish woman. These failures of the Bielski brothers to be perfect in no way lessen their achievement, any more than any failure to be perfect lessen any hero's achievement. Again, in the face of genocide, the Bielski brothers managed to save over a thousand people. Were they perfect? No. Were they admirable, heroic, and worth learning about? Absolutely yes.

Plot: A trio of brothers in Nazi-occupied Belorussia hide in the woods to try and save their fellow Jews whilst fighting the Nazis.

Since the Second World War there has always been a certain amount of controversy amongst Jews over the near-total lack of resistance by the Jews to the Holocaust. Many great writers, amongst whom I particularly recommend Vassily Grossman, have tried to work out why the Jews (mostly) didn't fight back. Now comes DEFIANCE which tries to give us heroic Jewish partisans who protect their people and strike out at the Nazis whilst making the sort of speeches about freedom that American films inevitably make, regardless of period or suitability.

Unfortunately the film is a lie, which rather undermines its message. In reality the brothers collaborated with the Soviets during the joint Soviet-Nazi invasion of Poland. Understandably their neighbours loathed them for this so when the Nazis came the Bielskis were attacked and driven into the forest. There they set up a camp which gradually attracted more and more refugee Jews. Far from fighting the Nazis and attacking tanks, as the film depicts, they spent most of the war trying to survive. Which meant banditry as they attacked and robbed local villages. Not only that but they joined up with the Soviets again - one of the brothers might even have entered into the NKVD - and betrayed Polish nationalist (anti-Nazi, anti-Soviet) partisans. They even massacred a whole village of Poles on one occasion, even killing the women and children. So, not exactly the heroic freedom fighters the film depicts.

Of course the film is also terribly made so that doesn't matter too much. Whilst the script is mere fiction the direction is terrible. Moments that ought to be shocking, such as the discovery of a mass grave, are completely lacking in horror or sensitivity. The usual clichés - white horses, re-enactors with overly-clean uniforms, an ambush threatened when the enemy stop and one of them begins to urinate on the exact bush a partisan is hiding behind - are ticked off one by one. Despite costing several tens of millions of dollars the whole thing looks cheap. The film never achieves the horror, the immediacy or the reality of the partisan lifestyle. Nor is there any feeling of what eking out survival in the forest is really like. It doesn't exactly help either that two of the three leads, Daniel Craig and Jamie Bell, both look more like Nazis than the bad guys. The whole thing carries on in a wholly predictable manner to its obvious and unsatisfying conclusion. Watch COME AND SEE instead.

When I think of World War 2 films, I usually think of graphic war scenes, Holocaust themes, or military strategy. This film takes a completely different approach to the WW2 era, showing it from the point of view of a group of Jewish citizens trying to avoid capture and survive out in the woods.

For a basic plot summary, this film focuses on the two eldest Bielski brothers (Tuvia & Zus), who lead a band of fleeing Jews into the woods when the Germans begin to invade Eastern Europe. While out in the Belarussian forest, the Bielski boys must not only feed hungry mouths and keep away from the Germans, but also navigate through different political/military strategies and the shady Russian army (in which you never know who to trust).

This movie may not be an all-time classic, but it is a very solid WW2 tale told from a perspective I'm not accustomed to (and thus rather fresh). Being based on a true story, it is remarkable to consider the odds that the vagrant Jews faced just to survive each day, nonetheless maintain their freedom.

The two acting leads (Daniel Craig & Liev Schreiber) are very compelling, while none of the auxiliary cast are exceptionally bad. Though it is a bit slow in the beginning, by the end the plot/characters will really have you rooting for success.

Thus, I recommend this film to WW2 enthusiasts of all kind. If you don't expect a masterpiece, and are content with a good story from a new angle, you will enjoy this film very much.

As Nazi forces sweep through Eastern Europe in 1941 the Bielski brothers (Daniel Craig, Liev Schreiber and Jamie Bell) seek refuge in the deep forests on the border of Poland and Belorussia (Belarus). More and more desperate Jews join their ranks for common protection and to oppose the occupying Germans. How can they all survive in the woods during the next four years of war?

Released in 2008-2009, "Defiance" is a drama/war film that has a lot going for it: a story based on actual events, good actors, authentic locations (filmed in Lithuania, a mere 100 miles or so from the actual sites), effective cinematography and a quality score. I personally love survival-type films and "Defiance" fills the bill, although it's not great like, say, "The Last of the Mohicans" (1992).

The filmmakers throw in all kinds of dynamic things to maintain the viewer's attention: Numerous gun battles, an airstrike and a tank, which are all faithful Hollywood-isms. It would've been better to simply focus on the characters and their gritty survival story. How about a deeper examination of individuals reduced to basic necessities? What about a study of people stripped of all civilized influences, struggling with the animalistic side of their psyche, as depicted in the excellent "Sands of the Kalahari" (1965)? How about the immaterial yet palpable bond of love which unites and gives life even in the worst possible conditions? There's some of this, of course, but I wanted it to go deeper, like in "The Flight of the Phoenix" (1965).

One thought-provoking scene concerns a man seeking to join the ever-growing group in the woods wherein he is asked what he does in order to determine how best to utilize his skills. He ponders it a moment and replies that he's "an intellectual." There's of course little use for an intellectual in such a forest community. The region was largely agrarian and so the peasant-types were skilled in at least one practical area as farmers, craftsmen or laborers. But what use was an "intellectual"?

How many of us are intellectuals and would largely be useless in such a scenario? We'd learn new skills real quick, huh? So the picture works on a what-if level: How long will our present society endure as it is before many of us are forced to live primitively in the sticks? If that happens, I hope you're more than just "an intellectual."

"Defiance" is worthwhile if the survival-in-the-woods plot piques your interest. It's superior to the similar "Tears of the Sun" (2003), but IMHO not quite as good as "Hornet's Nest" (1970) and "Sands of the Kalahari," although it's not far off.

The movie runs 2 hours, 17 minutes.

GRADE: B/B-