Defiance

By Thursday afternoon it had been nearly eighteen hours since I had seen a Holocaust-related movie, and I was seriously jonesing for another fix. There was only one option to feed my habit, and with that in mind I headed off to Leominster for the late matinee of Defiance.

Fortunately it was not among the movies in the unheated auditoriums at Leominster. Among the unfortunate losers were those going to see Notorious, for which the printed sign at the box office said "Sorry 4 the inconvenience." A little hip-hop-ese to ease the pain, I suppose.

The auditorium for Defiance was empty, but just as the house lights went down, two women in their seventies or eighties came in, and sat near the back. They talked all the way through the previews, but fortunately they quieted down once the movie started. This lasted until about fifteen minutes before the end of the movie, at which time they decided it was OK to talk outloud again. Even though I was down in the third row, the raspy sound of their s's made it hard to follow the dialogue. I thought about clearing my throat really loudly, but decided just to tough it out. My hardship seemed like small potatoes compared to the characters in the movie.

Despite my "jonesing" comment, I had actually been dreading seeing this movie. I kept thinking about the rally in Manhattan a couple weeks ago, the one in support of Israel in this Youtube video, where several of the people being interviewed talk about wanting to wipe out the Palestinians, and even making unashamed comparisons of themselves to the Nazis. In my mind, I imagined these people walking over to see Defiance, and celebrating it as evidence of the righteousness and necessity of Israel's actions.

But like so many preconceptions I have before seeing a movie, this one turned out to be off-the-mark. If anything, by the end of the movie I felt like this was not a story that would be welcome among hard-core supporters of Israel and its current policies versus the Arabs.

The story itself was well-paced and well-told. Although it definitely includes the death camps as a tangential phenomenon, it is really more about the in situ genocidal policies of the Nazis in Belorussia during 1941-1944, and about a group of Jews who became guerilla fighters to defend themselves. One learns at the end that it was based on a true story, and that several of the leaders of the revolt later emigrated to the United States.

This by itself runs somewhat counter to the mythology of Israeli history, in which Irgun, the self-proclaimed Jewish "terrorist" organization in Palestine, were the only defenders of the Jews, and the legitimate champions of their people. The Irgun, as it happens, received training from the Nazis themselves, who openly championed Zionism as a way of removing the Jews from northern Europe. Compared to this dirty history, the Bielski fighters in Defiance seem like the real deal, untainted by the compromises made by the early founders of Israel.

There's a very potent line about two-thirds of the way through the movie, where Zus (Liev Schreiber) and his brother Tuvia (Daniel Craig) are attempting to raid a police station to obtain medicine to treat a typhus outbreak among the forest dwellers. Zus says to Tuvia, "Nazism, Zionism, Communism---what's the difference when you're out to get antibiotics?" I nearly fell out of my chair.

The movie had a strong rough-and-tumble feel, like an old-time World War II war movie, upholding my theory that when you're attempting to tell revisionist stories (as this one was), it is best to rely heavily on classical technique.

The main plot (the survival of the refugees in the forest) has a strong underpinning from the individual human-level story, which is basically a brother-versus-brother rivalry. At first they are united, then they split up, and eventually they must reunite in order to save the forest dwellers. Their interactions essentially drive the story.

The tragic fatality of their conflict emerges in a very classical scene. In full view of all the other people, Tuvia (Craig) somewhat accidently impugns the honor of the woman that Zus (Schreiber) has taken as his "forest wife." That such a situation has arisen at all is a consequence of the attempt to remain human (and to love) amidst the loss of the containing vessel of institutions that would sanctify marraige.

In classical terms, to defend his woman's honor, Zus must strike Tuvia. Normally, Tuvia should accept that the blow was righteous. But in this case, to fail to respond would be to place his leadership status in jeopardy, which might itself lead to disaster. Thus he must not only fight back against his brother, but subdue him with the threat of bashing in his brains with a rock. The conflict thus arises from the "no-win" situation as in Greek tragedy. All of it can be traced back to the evil of the war itself.

The movie that this most reminded me of was not other Holocaust movies, but rather Sam Wood's For Whom the Bell Tolls (1943), a movie I would rank as one of the most underappreciated Hollywood classics of all time (Hemingway essentially wrote the book as a story for the eventual movie, and intended Gary Cooper to play the lead).

There's a great shot at the climax of Defiance, during a tank battle, when Zus (Schreiber) makes his re-entrance into the story. It's almost as awesome as Cooper firing his machine gun at the end of Wood's movie.

It was a very good movie, enjoyable to watch and with a lot of emotional impact. Among other things, it was by far the best performance I have seen by Daniel Craig. It also totally kicked the ass of The Reader, but I'm not surprised at all that in 2008 the latter wound up among the Best Picture nominees rather than Defiance. The Reader is a movie that those protesters in Manhattan could really sink their teeth into.