In praise of Defiance

I had the fortune of seeing current James Bond actor Daniel Craig's latest movie, Defiance, on New Year's eve during its early release. My run in with Tony Bennett later that night almost managed to push the movie from memory, but its excellence (and incessant advertising) has kept it top of mind.

The story of Byelorussian Jewish freedom fighters in WW2 was filmed entirely in Lithuania, with Reuters even dubbed Lithuania's role the "starring role." And my mom even got a line in the credits (at the very very end).

It's a gripping, interesting story that closely resembles the story of Lithuanian partisans who took to the forests to fight Nazis and then Commies. This has always been a topic of great interest to me, as I studied it in depth in college, and a paper I wrote on Lithuanian partisan warfare is even cited in the Wikipedia entry for Forest Brothers.

Both efforts involved hardscrabble men (and women) who
fought their enemies fiercely from their forest bunkers, tapping surrounding farms (friendlies and not so much) for food and drink, and stockpiling weapons from killed enemies.

The movie does a good job, I think, of displaying the wide array of types of people involved in the resistance: intellectuals, religious, old, young, families, moral and sadistic men.

It also continually asks: What use is morality when your enemies have none? Is freedom worth it when you have to fight and endure deadly conditions to have it? Is it reconcileable? Is it worth it?

The movie does a decent job of mitigating its portrayal of typical heroes. Craig's character vascillates throughout the movie between being a bloodthirsty vengeance-machine, and an inspiring and upstanding underground leader. The portrayal adds to the rawness of the partisan experience, and I do think Craig's performance greatly exceeds his Bond character (although his Scottish brogue peeks out and has no place in this movie).

That being said, there is one particular Liev Schreiber scene towards the end that was gag-inducing (the end of the tank scene).

However, Schreiber's character was very badass throughout the movie otherwise (New York Magazine called him a "surprisingly awesome Rambo stand-in.") One of his scenes did a particularly good job of displaying the choices between maintaining a semblance of normal life while fighting a brutal war (the snowy wedding sequence).

Since the movie was shot in Lithuania, it wasn't hard for me to imagine that this was actually a multi-million dollar Hollywood movie about Lithuanian partisans and not Byelorussian Jewish partisans..

Ed Zwick (Last Samurai, Blood Diamond) does a terrific job of delivering a realistic and moving experience, particularly right after the movie ends but before the credits begin to roll, when he shows actual images of the Bielski fighters. He had an interesting byline in the New York Times on filming the movie and the paradox of aggressive Jews in WW2 ("My grandfather Itchky was a tough Jew.")

So speaking of the credits, if you see it, which I think you should, stay till the end and keep your eye out for some Razgaitis love!