By Linda Winsh-Bolard
In 1941 the Germans moved onto extermination of Jewish population in the former USSR.
In what is today Belarus the population was moved into the ghettos earlier, then the villages were raided and their citizens killed. The killings continued in the ghettoes.
We meet the Bielski brothers after their parents were killed in such ride. Despite popular belief that it was the only the Nazis who killed Jews, the European Jewish population lived under the literal sword of pogroms for centuries. The brothers are not surprised, they are furious.
Tuvia and Zuv move into the forest and, in need of food and arms, they turn to the one Christian in their village they can trust. They receive a revolver, some provisions and their first consignment of Jews who escaped death.
Eventually the population surviving and fighting in the forest will reach 1,500. Twelve hundreds will survive the war.
Defiance describes living in the forest, and being a partisan, better than most films I have seen. Indeed, what Che: Part One attempts to do and fails Defiance shows abundantly and well. It also portrays clearly, pointedly and relentlessly the anti-Semitism common among all Christian communities that had never really disappeared.
Natural born fighter Zuv sums it up: Jews don’t fight, Jews don’t drink, they just die beautifully. Zuv is more than aware of anti-Semitism; he is angry at what is allowed to happen, furious with the all who help killing his people and determined to fight back. Tuvia sees his role more as a protector than revenge seeking machine. But the inevitable realization that Jews are expendable ties them together.
It is fast, dramatic, and strangely alive. It does not matter that the Jewish fighters became partisans by default and will to live, after all, for most partisans fighting for their lives, even if those lives are not in the imminent danger of extinction, is part of existence.
It keeps the daily routine, fear, hunger and hope in nice balance, following the slow evolvement of the largely intellectual Jewish escapees into seasoned forest dwellers and fighters who for the first time in nearly 2000 years learn to fight back.
The brothers are very different and very competitive. They fall apart, fall in love, deal with the harsh reality of surviving in the winter forest among hostile population. They live with death. They deal with the responsibility for those who will die in ghetto unless they run away, with those who did run away, with their families being killed. They fight. Zuv joins the Red Army partisans only to find out that Jews remain Jews wherever they go. Tuvia finds out that even Jews are greedy, rough and nasty. They are both learning about communal living and community they never thought out.
The film is not perfect. Despite wonderful acting, both Daniel Craig and Liev Schreiber are intently true to their parts, their interactions human and realistic, and all the supporting roles are well rendered, it tends, on occasion ,be rhetoric and sentimental. White horses and speeches should have been cut out. But these are relatively small mistakes in what becomes truly dramatic rendition of a true story.
Objections to Defiance range from: Jews don’t fight (expressed in many ways despite well documented facts) to Craig does not look Jewish (darn those Jews for daring not to look like Hitler described them) to objections to “intellectual” dialogs, particularly between the religious Shimon Haretz (Allan Corduner) and the intellectual Isaac Malbin (Mark Feuerstein) who are forced to share workload and camp. It might shock you but intellectuals do continue their debate while in prisons, it helps them survive. Forrest brides were found to be a mere distraction despite the fact that Tuvia and Lilka’s union lasted their whole lives. It’s expansively shot, filled with beautiful images and sweeping tracking shots.
Underneath all of this is palpable resistance to having the survivors of Holocaust portrayed as fighters rather than helpless victims in need of a non-Jewish savior. Deeper still is the fear that should today’s Israeli be fighters looking for revenge, there is over 2,000 years of killing they might be looking to pay back for and nobody’s innocent.
When the war was over, the youngest brother, Asael (Jamie Bell,) was dead without ever knowing he had a child. No glory or recognition waited for Tuvia and Zuv Bielski. The Soviet Union did not want Jewish heroes, partisans or not. Nor did anybody else. Both brothers ended up in the Jewish part of Brooklyn. Both started small business and died unrecognized nearly penniless. Lilka lived to see the original scholarly book about the Bielsky’s fight published and saw the meager interest it sparked. But her life, like the Bielski’s brothers, was underused. It should serve as warning to all governments: you are wasting human potential by denying the opportunities to the heroes of your wars, revolution and system changes. It might serve short time political interests to overlook them; it does not serve either the country or the people in the long run.
Paramount Vantage
Directed by: Edward Zwick
Written By: Clayton Frohman, Edward Zwick, from the non-fiction book “Defiance: The Bielski Partisans” by Nechama Tec
Cast: Daniel Craig, Liev Schreiber, Jamie Bell, George MacKay
