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Director: Edward Zwick
Running time: 137 minutes
Rated: R
Director Edward Zwick brings us a unique perspective to the Holocaust tragedy in his newest film, Defiance. Starring Daniel Craig (of “new” James Bond fame) as Tuvia Bielski and Liev Schrieber as Zus Bielski (Hamlet, Mixed Nuts), Defiance follows the true story of a group of Russian Jews hiding out in the woods during the height of Nazi aggression in WWII Russia. Tuvia and Zus find themselves taking in more and more refugees until the need for organization arises. Tuvia, much to his brother’s chagrin, emerges naturally as the camp’s leader. Throughout the movie, the camp is beset by sickness, snowstorms, internal strife, Nazi attacks, and aerial bombings. Food is an ever-present concern. Pregnancies are forbidden. The movie grabs the audience and pulls them into its world by bringing the terrors of the Holocaust to the fore. In one of the movie’s first scenes. Tuvia and Zus’s youngest brother Aron Bielski (George MacKay) stumbles upon a group of Jews hiding in the forest. In doing so, he also discovers a long and winding trench dug into the forest floor. The trench is filled to the top with the naked, bony bodies of executed Jews. Young Aron is mortified to witness such a horror.
One of Defiance’s most alluring aspects is its synecdochical controversy that reflects the evil of the Holocaust. Even during Nazi-free moments, Tuvia experiences many trying situations within the Jewish refugee camp, from deciding which Russian civilians they should steal from, how much they should steal, whether they should kill civilian witnesses to protect their location to deciding what to do with an infant being born of an “illegal” pregnancy. In a world where survival is one’s primary concern and where people are being executed for their religion, Tuvia refuses to abandon his pre-war morals and ethics and believes in kindness even to the people they rob. Zus, on the other hand, meets the ugliness of their situation with the cold, realist mentality of “kill or be killed”. This ideological contrasts eventually leads to blows between the brothers, and Zus leaves the Jewish camp to join the Red Army partisan camp elsewhere in the forest.
The movie’s strength lies in how Tuvia and the other leading members of the camp respond to each new threat, be it Nazi, natural, or internal. We see how the Jewish refugees as a whole respond to each threat as well, and how they manage to hold on to their vestiges of humanity even when living in a forest. Eventually, the refugees build huts, furniture, a school, a kitchen, and a nursery from scratch. Two ever-kvetching friends argue over politics, philosophy, and the Torah. Someone carves a chessboard and chess pieces.
Tuvia’s love interest of the story, Lilka Ticktin (Alexa Davalos), pops up out of the blue about halfway through the movie and the two fall for each other a little too quickly to believe. If anything, the love story of the third brother, Asael Bielski (Jamie Bell) is more compelling. Asael’s love interest with Chaya Dziencielsky (Mia Wasikowska) carries an atmosphere of childhood innocence, and to see it bloom amid Nazi soldiers and genocide is surreal yet charming. One of the most ambiguous scenes of the movie is when Asael and Chaya are married within the camp. Throughout the ceremony, the camera keeps cutting to Zus and the Red Army brigade setting up an ambush for a Nazi patrol elsewhere. As the marriage ceremony progresses, the tension in the music rises as we watch Zus’s brigade take aim. When Asael crushes a glass cup under his heel (traditional of Jewish marriages), people begin playing klezmer music just as Zus and the Russians open fire on the Nazis. We watch the Jewish refugees dance and sing and celebrate with Asael and Chaya as Zus’s brigade tears the Nazi patrol apart– to klezmer music. Nazi officers fall and are blown backwards. Their trucks explode. The merciless annihilation of the Nazi patrol to a joyful klezmer tune reflects, once again, the general controversy ever-present in the film’s situations. It could also be seen as director Zwick’s cinematic middle finger to the Nazi regime.
Craig’s performance as Tuvia is good, but does not surpass any expectations. In some of the more controversial scenes, the emotion Tuvia displays feels lacking at times and would have done a lot in empowering the scene. The power of the movie comes more in the evidence of the weak and unprepared rising up to meet a towering foe. Most Holocaust-related films portray the horrors and suffering that the Jews were subject to, portraying them as helpless. The movie does well to show that even in the most horrifying and overpowering conditions, people can still organize and fight back. Defiance is more tension and drama than gunfights, but it all meshes together to deliver a rather entertaining– albeit sobering and at times, saddening– experience.
And watching Daniel Craig beat the hell out of Nazis isn’t all that bad, either.
4 out of 5 stars.
~Tinct
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