| new release -¦¦- DEFIANCE -¦¦- 5/10 -¦¦- online THU.15.JAN. |
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 "Don't f*ck with the jews!" barked Daniel Craig in Munich - and while such salty 'Anglo-Saxon' dialogue would perhaps jar in Craig's new picture Defiance, set as it is in the eastern Europe of the early 1940s, the fundamental message once again applies. The not-to-be-messed-with Jewish persons in this instance are the Bielski brothers, Polish smugglers who mount a stern resistance to the invading Nazi hordes as the latter sweep over their territory (now part of Belarus) towards a final, fatal confrontation with the Red Army. The Bielski story is a true and remarkable one - indeed, it's surprising that no one has ever brought it to the screen before, and that it should arrive now, well over a decade after Schindler's List. The delay can partly be ascribed to the tricky moral issues raised by the picture. Because whereas many were slightly uncomfortable with the fact that the Spielberg Oscar-winner focussed on the heroism of a wealthy Gentile, there have been qualms expressed that Defiance suggests that, if more Jewish people had resisted the Nazis and their collaborators with some of the vim and vigour displayed by the Bielskis, more of them would have avoided the fate of extermination. But while it would be undoubtedly unacceptably offensive to claim that the Holocaust was in any way the Jews' "fault," that doesn't mean such instances of Jewish resistance and heroism should never be highlighted via the mass medium of cinema. Indeed, Defiance deserves credit for finding such fresh WWII material, more than six decades after VJ day. Such a shame, then, that director Zwick and co-writer Clayton Frohman, adapting Nechama Tec's book Defiance - The Bielski Partisans, should turn such dynamite subject-matter into such a lukewarm, ploddingly dutiful movie. Daniel Craig, Jamie Bell and (especially) Liev Schreiber are each fine as the Bielskis, taken on their own terms, but they don't look much like each other - the age-gap between Craig (now 40), Schreiber (41, though he's supposedly Craig's junior here) and Bell (22) isn't exactly a help. And the friction between the older siblings - Craig's brooding, practical-minded Tuvya and Schreiber's hot-headed Zus - doesn't really fire many sparks, partly because Zus departs the clan's forest stronghold around halfway to join forces with the Soviet army, and afterwards pops up only intermittently. The film is atmospheric and engaging to look at - we feel the dampness and discomfort of what must have been an unpleasant shoot - and studded with action-sequences, but it never quite manages to click into proper gear or shake off its stodgy, old-fashioned air. The script is mainly a matter of rather uninspired dramatic, melodramatic and romantic episodes, and there's never much sense of the imminent peril which must have been a daily reality for the beleaguered residents of the Bielskis' bosky fastness. Only in the final act, when the community has to trek across land and water towards security - and Asael unexpectedly emerges as the 'Moses' of the situation - does Defiance really achieve the kind of epic feel for which Zwick so evidently and earnestly strives. He might have been better advised to dwell more on the intriguing angle that the Bielskis, who are far from devout adherents of their religion, were explicitly outlaws - outcasts, almost - whose bootlegging-honed skills and anti-authoritarian instincts proved so crucial to their survival. It's a variation of the phenomenon noted in such cities as Berlin, where it was the demi-monde of mavericks, Bohemians and criminals who proved most annoyingly troublesome to the order-obsessed Nazi machine, in contrast to the more docile and biddable middle-classes. Neil Young, 15th January, 2009 director : Edward Zwick country : USA year : 2008 run-time : 137m (BBFC) seen : 12th January, 2009 cinema : Empire, Sunderland, UK format : 35mm paid : £3.50 MVP : Liev Schreiber (actor) respected second opinion : Nick Schager, Lessons of Darkness |
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