"God Will Not Part These Waters" - 'Defiance' Review...
Whenever a new movie based on World War II and the Nazi Holocaust is released, I am always reminded of someone who told me years ago that the whole subject has been kicked to death and there's no real reason for WWII movies like these to keep getting made. It strikes me as the kind of thing that I would expect to hear from those people who deny that the Holocaust ever even happened, or at least someone with bad taste in movies. Didn't these people see Life Is Beautiful? The Pianist? Downfall? If the movies are this good, I say keep 'em coming!Every time I see a new World War II movie, I tend to be pleasantly surprised that they always manage to avoid telling and retelling the same stories over and over again. Defiance is the story of a small band of refugees who flee Belarussia and hide out in the woods from the Germans. Initially they only seek shelter and safety, but they slowly become organized and, after a series of personal losses, decide to fight back.
Liev Schrieber and Daniel Craig play the foremost two of the four real life Bielski brothers, the men who led the band of refugees and most clearly embody the complicated souls that illustrate the movie's message. They are tremendous actors with a powerful presence, but as soon as they begin seeking violent revenge it becomes clear that they will not come across as traditional war movie heroes. The movie evokes a powerful mix of emotions the first time this happens.
More than anything else, the thing that sets Defiance apart from other World War II films is that it's not about the atrocities that the Nazis committed, it's not about the suffering of the millions of murdered Jews, and it's not even so much about the strength of the human spirit and its willingness to push on in the face of insurmountable adversity. More than any of that, it's about the complexities of war and the idea that war is never delineated smoothly between a good side and an evil side, even in one of the most violent and vicious wars of the 20th century.The movie's first major weakness is that it is told entirely from the perspective of the Jewish refugees. The Nazis are a faraway threat that we understand because we know the history of the war and because we can occasionally hear the distant crackle of their gunfire and booms of their bombs. They show up occasionally in small numbers, stumbling across a few of the refugees and giving us brief, tense battles and a sense that their ramshackle shelters roped together in the freezing forest can never be anything more than the most temporary lodgings.
There is some intense rivalry between the Bielski brothers, who all want to help Jews and hurt Nazis, but whose priorities differ. Tuvia (Craig) believes from the beginning that all Jews that seek shelter must be taken in an protected, regardless of whether or not they have anything to contribute to the fledgling society. Zus (Schrieber), harbors much more anger and a desperate need for vengeance, and he believes that it's more important to keep their numbers small and useful and to concentrate on killing Nazis, which he reasons will save more Jews in the long-run. The conflict over whether it's better to help their own side or hurt the other side provides an important conflict-analysis that rings true to this day.Of the performances, Liev Schrieber's is by far the most powerful. Zus ia a complicated man with strong convictions but who seems to lack total certainty even himself about what he is willing to do for what he believes in. He never falters or hesitates, but there is something in his expression that indicates an understanding of the suffering that surrounds him and a question about how much of it originates with him.
It's quite possibly the best performance of Schrieber's career thus far, over-shadowing even the wildly famous Daniel Craig, who definitely manages to escape the unbrella of James Bond, which is no small task.Sadly, in the third act, the movie falters spectacularly. Earlier, we were given an interesting illustration of their collective situation when Tuvia ordered that pregnancies were forbidden because the group must not be forced to provide for the needs of an infant. Soon afterward, however, a young couple who have fallen in love in the camp are wed in an elaborate wedding ceremony that included a celebration so festive and raucous that it drowned out the nearby gunfight with some Nazi soldiers. What ever happened to the rules?
More importantly, the battle at the end of the film strikes me as something intended to provide material for the compilation of the movie's trailer, as well as a heavily stylized Hollywood version of what really happened.
The Bielski brothers were the largest and most successful band of Jewish refugees to escape death at the hands of the Nazis (all told, about 1,200 lives were saved, whose descendants now number in the tens of thousands), but unfortunately, in real life it's not likely that just the right people had just the right the chance to rush Nazi tanks and drop grenades into them, or that the whole ragtag band ambushed at just the right second, saving a crucial character from certain death under the fire of an approaching line of Nazi machine guns.It's satisfying to watch, of course, but it's exactly the kind of satisfaction that so many dreamed of during the war and so few ever got. And probably none in the dramatic fashion that we see in the movie. Odd that they would exaggerate the true events just before trumpeting that "The Bielski Brothers never sought recognition for what they did..."
The Bean-Meter
Bean's happy, man. He wants to have words with these lunatic Holocaust deniers, but as far as the movie's concerned, he just keeps singing this song -
"For he's a jolly good fellow,
For he's a jolly good fellow,
For he's a jolly good fell-LOOOOOOOWWW!!!
Which nobody can defy!"
Sing it up, Bean!
