Jakob the Liar features a good straight-up performance by Robin Williams and a terrific supporting cast, but more than that it is a surprisingly complex film that reflects many of the classic traits of Yiddish humor. In Yiddish humor, the shtetl, or classic village, as immortalized in the wonderful stories of Sholomon Aleichem (think Fiddler on the Roof and Tevya, which is a direct adaptation from Aleichem's tales) are full of set characters - and they are here - the Professor is like the Rebbe, Jakob is a schnorre (someone who loves to get things for free) who becomes the mensch (the upstanding man), and so on.
Of all the films in the Holocaust corpus this is one of the few that reflects with fantasy and imagination and humor what suffering means in Jewish culture. One can argue that films about the Holocaust necessarily are depressing (or must have that Hollywood lift of hope - why?! - there was no hope) - but here there is a genuine attempt to speak into the culture of Ghetto Judaism and refer back to Aleichem's wonderful mix of family, suffering, and laughter.
The film is not wholly successful - the humour is wry, but it never quite gets to the sorrow in it, and replaces that with genuine sorrow. However it defies our norms of this style of film and as such, very correctly, challenges our notions and images of daily life outside the camps.
All in all this rewards viewing at a deeper level than simply a man who invents a radio to give others hope - it is a real reflection of pre-war Judaic humor and as such is a very worthwhile attempt to preserve the deeper meaning of a Jewish understanding that humor is one of the better ways, and sometimes the only way, to cope when darkness falls.
