Daniel Craig and director Edward Zwick shine in dark 'Defiance'
http://media.www.bcheights.com/media/st ... 6583.shtml
Defiance - Movie Review
http://www.armchairgeneral.com/defiance ... review.htm
Alright. Today, a couple of friends and I met up and went to see Defiance. Defiance, starring Daniel Craig, tells the story of a group of Jewish people who started a resistance community in the forests of Belorussia to evade being sent to concentration camps.
The movie starts with a black and white, grainy, real video of a mass execution of Jews...and fades from black and white into color, a stunning recreation of the scene. That was one of my favorite moments in the film. I got such chills.
From that moment on, I couldn't look away. I got pulled into the story of three Jewish brothers, the Bielskis. When their parents are murdered by Secret Service officials, the brothers take refuge in the woods. After stumbling across other Jewish people, Tuvia Bielski (Craig) decides to protect and provide for them.
Now, like any other film, this one had its flaws and did tend to lull at times. The lulls were good breaks from intense, intense violence, however, and I didn't walk out disappointed. Unlike other movies released this weekend, Defiance will make you think. I'm glad I saw it.
For those who read my review of Valkyrie on Sunday, I think I enjoyed Valkyrie a tad more over Defiance simply because it was more heart-pounding and contained non-stop thrills. However, I highly recommend both. Good movies, if you're looking to see a movie that doesn't require checking your brain at the door.
http://elyselynd.livejournal.com/19210.html
Non member Defiance Reviews
Moderator: Germangirl
-
Germangirl
- Moderator
- Posts: 47073
- Joined: Sun Apr 29, 2007 5:05 pm
- Location: Germany
Great review!
It’s a credit to Daniel Craig’s skills as an actor that we never once think of James Bond while watching the World War II drama “Defiance.”
As Tuvia Bielski, the leader of a group of renegade Jews who fled from and fought the Nazis in what today is Belarus, Craig is defiant but not cocky. There’s no trace of the brutally cold and efficient British super agent he’s portrayed in two Bond films.
With the exception of Sean Connery, none of the actors who portrayed James Bond had much of a career once their days behind a Walther PPK ended. So it’s pleasing to know that top-notch war dramas and other fare like this still lie in front of Craig, no matter how long his run as Bond.
“Defiance” is one of those “based on a true story” movie, which means the larger historical fact is accepted, but many of the details are up for debate.
In a brief Google search about the Bielski Partisans, I learn that more than 1,000 Jews built a fairly substantial settlement deep in the forests of Belarus, including a school, hospital and even a jail. They had a herd of cows to keep them fed. That’s a lot more comfy than the crude log shacks shown in the movie, with Tuvia’s people subsisting at barely above starvation level, and nearly freezing to death in the winter.
And who knows if Tuvia and his brother Zus were really rivals, a la Cain and Abel, for control of the group? But that’s the central conflict of the film, and the tension between Craig and Liev Schreiber, as Zus, is compelling.
Zus is the headstrong brother who follows the Old Testament: “Blood for blood.” He wants to take the fight to the Germans, and summarily execute any collaborators who turned Jews over to the Nazis.
But Tuvia’s goal is merely to survive, and save as many Jewish lives as he can. With the help of a few intellectual types, he wants to build a semblance of a community, even as the Germans vie for their extinction. “We may be hunted like animals, but we will not behave like animals.”
“Defiance” is directed by Edward Zwick (“Glory,” “The Last Samurai”) who co-wrote the script with Clayton Frohman based on the book by Nechama Tec. Zwick’s a master at bringing historical dramas to full-blooded life, and does so again here.
What makes Tuvia interesting is that he’s far from perfect. He makes bad judgment calls, lets a rogue element within the community go too far for too long, and overlooks some despicable behavior. (At one point, a captured German soldier is pummeled to death by a revengeful mob.) During one critical battle, he completely freezes, and it’s up to his younger brother Asael (Jamie Bell) to carry the day.
Could you imagine James Bond choking up, trembling and indecisive while troops march down on his flock? But Craig’s looking to build a character, not a star persona based on Bond. It’s one of many reasons why “Defiance” stands tall.
3.5 stars out of four
source:http://captaincritic.blogspot.com/2009/ ... iance.html
It’s a credit to Daniel Craig’s skills as an actor that we never once think of James Bond while watching the World War II drama “Defiance.”
As Tuvia Bielski, the leader of a group of renegade Jews who fled from and fought the Nazis in what today is Belarus, Craig is defiant but not cocky. There’s no trace of the brutally cold and efficient British super agent he’s portrayed in two Bond films.
With the exception of Sean Connery, none of the actors who portrayed James Bond had much of a career once their days behind a Walther PPK ended. So it’s pleasing to know that top-notch war dramas and other fare like this still lie in front of Craig, no matter how long his run as Bond.
“Defiance” is one of those “based on a true story” movie, which means the larger historical fact is accepted, but many of the details are up for debate.
In a brief Google search about the Bielski Partisans, I learn that more than 1,000 Jews built a fairly substantial settlement deep in the forests of Belarus, including a school, hospital and even a jail. They had a herd of cows to keep them fed. That’s a lot more comfy than the crude log shacks shown in the movie, with Tuvia’s people subsisting at barely above starvation level, and nearly freezing to death in the winter.
And who knows if Tuvia and his brother Zus were really rivals, a la Cain and Abel, for control of the group? But that’s the central conflict of the film, and the tension between Craig and Liev Schreiber, as Zus, is compelling.
Zus is the headstrong brother who follows the Old Testament: “Blood for blood.” He wants to take the fight to the Germans, and summarily execute any collaborators who turned Jews over to the Nazis.
But Tuvia’s goal is merely to survive, and save as many Jewish lives as he can. With the help of a few intellectual types, he wants to build a semblance of a community, even as the Germans vie for their extinction. “We may be hunted like animals, but we will not behave like animals.”
“Defiance” is directed by Edward Zwick (“Glory,” “The Last Samurai”) who co-wrote the script with Clayton Frohman based on the book by Nechama Tec. Zwick’s a master at bringing historical dramas to full-blooded life, and does so again here.
What makes Tuvia interesting is that he’s far from perfect. He makes bad judgment calls, lets a rogue element within the community go too far for too long, and overlooks some despicable behavior. (At one point, a captured German soldier is pummeled to death by a revengeful mob.) During one critical battle, he completely freezes, and it’s up to his younger brother Asael (Jamie Bell) to carry the day.
Could you imagine James Bond choking up, trembling and indecisive while troops march down on his flock? But Craig’s looking to build a character, not a star persona based on Bond. It’s one of many reasons why “Defiance” stands tall.
3.5 stars out of four
source:http://captaincritic.blogspot.com/2009/ ... iance.html
-
Germangirl
- Moderator
- Posts: 47073
- Joined: Sun Apr 29, 2007 5:05 pm
- Location: Germany
From some people over at CBN
I just got back from seeing Defiance and I enjoyed it. It hit all the buttons for me. Granted I'm not a cinephile or anything, but I can be pretty picky or unforgiving of a movie I don't like. I only ask of a film that it tells me a good story, takes me out of my life for however long the film is and puts me into their world, and I want to care about what happens. This movie did all that. Of course there's Hollywood moments but it's a Hollywood movie.
I was stunned by the amount of people in the theatre, it was a bigger crowd than QOS. The audience ( which were older than my sister and myself) laughed at the humour, and gasped at the violence. There were some stirrings as if some people wanted to cheer a little. The people around me were quite invested in the movie. When the movie ended, people weren't in a hurry to run out. They stood and watched the credits roll. A woman behind me said very loud "Well that was good!"
My review is on the 'What movie have you seen today?' thread, but I have to say that the film was AMAZING! FIVE STARS!!!
I just saw "DEFIANCE" yesterday afternoon. I thought it was excellent. The audience seemed to think so, as well. They applauded when the movie ended. I only have a few quibbles. It almost threatened to drag a little in the movie's second half. And I was not impressed by the film's score. I found it slow and unoriginal. But I was impressed by everything else about the film - including Craig's performance.
Two thumbs up, as far as I'm concerned.
The top notch acting in the Weisz/Craig/Spall 'Betrayal' is emotionally true, often v funny and its beautifully staged with filmic qualities..
"Defiance" a spell-binding story
What does it take to survive? Are some people inherently brave? Does adversity bring out the best or the worst in us?
Edward Zwick (director and screenwriter) has crafted a fine movie in "Defiance." Bringing this little known true story to the screen was certainly a labor of love.
Daniel Craig gives an outstanding performance as Tuvia Bielski, the eldest of three Jewish brothers who survive the slaughter of their village in Nazi-occupied Poland. The brothers (Liev Schreiber and Jamie Bell) retreat to the Belarussian forest near their home. Their camp becomes refuge for an uncertain group of Jewish refugees and a rag tag group of resistance fighters.
Tuvia is a natural leader and is portrayed by Craig to be a complicated man who takes on great responsibility in extraordinary times. The refugees look to him first for their safety and survival. His relationship with his brother Zus (Schreiber) is strained and finally broken under the pressure. In the end, the 1,200 camp survivors must find their own strength by banding together as a community and depending on each other.
It is a challenge to tell a story like this without dissolving into melodrama or making the character larger than life. Zwick does a good job of showing us that human nature is flawed, that courage can be contagious, that one person can make a difference and the only life worth living is the life we freely choose.
A-
http://blog.syracuse.com/moviereviews/2 ... iance.html
What does it take to survive? Are some people inherently brave? Does adversity bring out the best or the worst in us?
Edward Zwick (director and screenwriter) has crafted a fine movie in "Defiance." Bringing this little known true story to the screen was certainly a labor of love.
Daniel Craig gives an outstanding performance as Tuvia Bielski, the eldest of three Jewish brothers who survive the slaughter of their village in Nazi-occupied Poland. The brothers (Liev Schreiber and Jamie Bell) retreat to the Belarussian forest near their home. Their camp becomes refuge for an uncertain group of Jewish refugees and a rag tag group of resistance fighters.
Tuvia is a natural leader and is portrayed by Craig to be a complicated man who takes on great responsibility in extraordinary times. The refugees look to him first for their safety and survival. His relationship with his brother Zus (Schreiber) is strained and finally broken under the pressure. In the end, the 1,200 camp survivors must find their own strength by banding together as a community and depending on each other.
It is a challenge to tell a story like this without dissolving into melodrama or making the character larger than life. Zwick does a good job of showing us that human nature is flawed, that courage can be contagious, that one person can make a difference and the only life worth living is the life we freely choose.
A-
http://blog.syracuse.com/moviereviews/2 ... iance.html
http://www.clevelandjewishnews.com/arti ... 908633.txt
"Quiet, stalwart and haunted, Craig is exceptional as Tuvia. His chiseled face melts from his steely, cold James Bond attitude to horror and remorse after his first assassination of a Nazi sympathizer. Craig balances Tuvia’s great capacity for violence with his great capacity for caring, all churning underneath the stoic shell of a general."
"Quiet, stalwart and haunted, Craig is exceptional as Tuvia. His chiseled face melts from his steely, cold James Bond attitude to horror and remorse after his first assassination of a Nazi sympathizer. Craig balances Tuvia’s great capacity for violence with his great capacity for caring, all churning underneath the stoic shell of a general."
-
Germangirl
- Moderator
- Posts: 47073
- Joined: Sun Apr 29, 2007 5:05 pm
- Location: Germany
Biig welcome back, JJJoniJoni wrote:http://www.clevelandjewishnews.com/arti ... 908633.txt
"Quiet, stalwart and haunted, Craig is exceptional as Tuvia. His chiseled face melts from his steely, cold James Bond attitude to horror and remorse after his first assassination of a Nazi sympathizer. Craig balances Tuvia’s great capacity for violence with his great capacity for caring, all churning underneath the stoic shell of a general."
The top notch acting in the Weisz/Craig/Spall 'Betrayal' is emotionally true, often v funny and its beautifully staged with filmic qualities..
-
Germangirl
- Moderator
- Posts: 47073
- Joined: Sun Apr 29, 2007 5:05 pm
- Location: Germany
“Defiance” Shows a Soft Side
by Aaron Elias
Volume 42, Issue 14 | Jan 19 2009
Courtesy of Paramount Vantage
Liev Schrieber and 007 star Daniel Craig (above) play Jewish brothers who rebel against Nazi persecution in order to rescue other Jews.
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 (“Hamlet,” “Mixed Nuts”) as Zus Bielski, “Defiance” follows the true story of a group of Russian Jews hiding out in the woods during the height of Nazi aggression in World War II 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 film, the camp is beset by illness, snowstorms, internal strife, Nazi attacks and aerial bombings. Food is an ever-present concern and pregnancies are forbidden. The film grabs the audience and pulls it into its world by bringing the terrors of the Holocaust to the fore.
In one of the film’s first scenes, Tuvia and Zus’ 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. To Aron’s horror, the trench is filled to the top with the naked, bony bodies of executed Jews.
One of the movie’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 and how much they should steal to whether they should kill civilian witnesses to protect their location.
In a world where survival is one’s primary concern and people are 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 contrast 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 film’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. The audience sees how the Jewish refugees as a whole respond to each threat as well, and how they manage to hold onto 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 while 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 film and the two unrealistically fall for each other a little too quickly.
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 film 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’ 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 as 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.
The power of the film arrives 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 by portraying them as helpless.
The film 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 – experienc
Daniel Craig and Liev Schreiber lead the forest fighters of 'Defiance'
by Clint O'Connor/Plain Dealer Film Critic
Thursday January 15, 2009, 1:00 PM
Paramount VantageLiev Schreiber and Daniel Craig are the battling Bielskis in "Defiance."
REVIEW
Defiance
Who: With Daniel Craig, Liev Schreiber, Jamie Bell. Directed by Edward Zwick.
Rated: R for violence and language.
Running time: 137 minutes.
When: Opens Friday.
Where: Area theaters.
Grade: A-
What others are saying about "Defiance."
Read more about the real Bielski brothers.
Ed Zwick found a fresh take on World War II: Jews fight back.
"Defiance" charts the remarkable true story of the Bielski brothers from Poland, who battled the Germans and their collaborators in the forests of Belarussia and helped save about 1,200 Jews (those are Oskar Schindler numbers). Zwick wrote recently in the New York Times that when his friend, screenwriter Clay Frohman, first approached him with the idea for a Holocaust-themed film, Zwick groaned, "Not another movie about victims."
Uh, no. The oppressed Jews in this film have machine guns and kick some serious Nazi butt.
We're never far removed from the aftershocks of World War II -- not geo-politically, and not at the multiplex. Along with "Defiance," you can also witness the plot to kill Hitler ("Valkyrie"), and the love story of a former SS guard ("The Reader").
Although Zwick ("Glory") gets carried away at times with the gung-ho theatrics, "Defiance" is a rousing movie experience, thanks in part to fierce performances from Daniel Craig and Liev Schreiber as the two oldest battling Bielskis (Tuvia and Zus). They are joined by Asael (Jamie Bell) and the much younger Aron (George MacKay). Just a boy, Aron conveys a great deal in his silences.
We're never far removed from the aftershocks of World War II -- not geo-politically, and not at the multiplex. Along with "Defiance," you can also witness the plot to kill Hitler ("Valkyrie"), and the love story of a former SS guard ("The Reader").
Although Zwick ("Glory") gets carried away at times with the gung-ho theatrics, "Defiance" is a rousing movie experience, thanks in part to fierce performances from Daniel Craig and Liev Schreiber as the two oldest battling Bielskis (Tuvia and Zus). They are joined by Asael (Jamie Bell) and the much younger Aron (George MacKay). Just a boy, Aron conveys a great deal in his silences.
Check out the trailer:
Barely dodging death at multiple turns, the Bielskis manage to find refuge deep in the forest, beautifully captured by director of photography Eduardo Serra, who worked with Zwick on "Blood Diamond." Based on the book "Defiance: The Bielski Partisans" by Nechama Tec, the film is part guerrilla war journal, part harsh times chronicle.
The Bielskis recruit others, and soon a forest society of suffering emerges. It's the blending of women and children, the elderly, peasants, and intellectuals who fled the ghetto. A few cling to old traditions, others adapt to the new realities.
As Tuvia and Zus, two alpha males forever clashing, Craig and Schreiber deliver some of the strongest work of their careers. The brothers are awash in the simmering anger of two who have witnessed the worst of what man can do to his fellow man, and find revenge in perseverance.
The victims that Zwick was so tired of seeing on screen, the millions of Jews being slaughtered, are the motivation for the forest fighters. It took selfless, courageous men and women to confront the Nazis. "Defiance" is a tribute to their sacrifices.
http://www.cleveland.com/moviebuff/index.ssf/2009/01
by Aaron Elias
Volume 42, Issue 14 | Jan 19 2009
Courtesy of Paramount Vantage
Liev Schrieber and 007 star Daniel Craig (above) play Jewish brothers who rebel against Nazi persecution in order to rescue other Jews.
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 (“Hamlet,” “Mixed Nuts”) as Zus Bielski, “Defiance” follows the true story of a group of Russian Jews hiding out in the woods during the height of Nazi aggression in World War II 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 film, the camp is beset by illness, snowstorms, internal strife, Nazi attacks and aerial bombings. Food is an ever-present concern and pregnancies are forbidden. The film grabs the audience and pulls it into its world by bringing the terrors of the Holocaust to the fore.
In one of the film’s first scenes, Tuvia and Zus’ 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. To Aron’s horror, the trench is filled to the top with the naked, bony bodies of executed Jews.
One of the movie’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 and how much they should steal to whether they should kill civilian witnesses to protect their location.
In a world where survival is one’s primary concern and people are 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 contrast 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 film’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. The audience sees how the Jewish refugees as a whole respond to each threat as well, and how they manage to hold onto 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 while 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 film and the two unrealistically fall for each other a little too quickly.
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 film 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’ 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 as 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.
The power of the film arrives 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 by portraying them as helpless.
The film 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 – experienc
Daniel Craig and Liev Schreiber lead the forest fighters of 'Defiance'
by Clint O'Connor/Plain Dealer Film Critic
Thursday January 15, 2009, 1:00 PM
Paramount VantageLiev Schreiber and Daniel Craig are the battling Bielskis in "Defiance."
REVIEW
Defiance
Who: With Daniel Craig, Liev Schreiber, Jamie Bell. Directed by Edward Zwick.
Rated: R for violence and language.
Running time: 137 minutes.
When: Opens Friday.
Where: Area theaters.
Grade: A-
What others are saying about "Defiance."
Read more about the real Bielski brothers.
Ed Zwick found a fresh take on World War II: Jews fight back.
"Defiance" charts the remarkable true story of the Bielski brothers from Poland, who battled the Germans and their collaborators in the forests of Belarussia and helped save about 1,200 Jews (those are Oskar Schindler numbers). Zwick wrote recently in the New York Times that when his friend, screenwriter Clay Frohman, first approached him with the idea for a Holocaust-themed film, Zwick groaned, "Not another movie about victims."
Uh, no. The oppressed Jews in this film have machine guns and kick some serious Nazi butt.
We're never far removed from the aftershocks of World War II -- not geo-politically, and not at the multiplex. Along with "Defiance," you can also witness the plot to kill Hitler ("Valkyrie"), and the love story of a former SS guard ("The Reader").
Although Zwick ("Glory") gets carried away at times with the gung-ho theatrics, "Defiance" is a rousing movie experience, thanks in part to fierce performances from Daniel Craig and Liev Schreiber as the two oldest battling Bielskis (Tuvia and Zus). They are joined by Asael (Jamie Bell) and the much younger Aron (George MacKay). Just a boy, Aron conveys a great deal in his silences.
We're never far removed from the aftershocks of World War II -- not geo-politically, and not at the multiplex. Along with "Defiance," you can also witness the plot to kill Hitler ("Valkyrie"), and the love story of a former SS guard ("The Reader").
Although Zwick ("Glory") gets carried away at times with the gung-ho theatrics, "Defiance" is a rousing movie experience, thanks in part to fierce performances from Daniel Craig and Liev Schreiber as the two oldest battling Bielskis (Tuvia and Zus). They are joined by Asael (Jamie Bell) and the much younger Aron (George MacKay). Just a boy, Aron conveys a great deal in his silences.
Check out the trailer:
Barely dodging death at multiple turns, the Bielskis manage to find refuge deep in the forest, beautifully captured by director of photography Eduardo Serra, who worked with Zwick on "Blood Diamond." Based on the book "Defiance: The Bielski Partisans" by Nechama Tec, the film is part guerrilla war journal, part harsh times chronicle.
The Bielskis recruit others, and soon a forest society of suffering emerges. It's the blending of women and children, the elderly, peasants, and intellectuals who fled the ghetto. A few cling to old traditions, others adapt to the new realities.
As Tuvia and Zus, two alpha males forever clashing, Craig and Schreiber deliver some of the strongest work of their careers. The brothers are awash in the simmering anger of two who have witnessed the worst of what man can do to his fellow man, and find revenge in perseverance.
The victims that Zwick was so tired of seeing on screen, the millions of Jews being slaughtered, are the motivation for the forest fighters. It took selfless, courageous men and women to confront the Nazis. "Defiance" is a tribute to their sacrifices.
http://www.cleveland.com/moviebuff/index.ssf/2009/01
The top notch acting in the Weisz/Craig/Spall 'Betrayal' is emotionally true, often v funny and its beautifully staged with filmic qualities..
It needs almost half of my screen....
CRITICAL MASS : Defiance is riveting drama; Is it history, or its shadow?
BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. - A filmmaker chooses what kind of movie he wants to make, knowing that no movie can reasonably represent all views and perspectives. If a film concerns historical events then history will be sculpted and groomed into something like a story, a manageable legend.
So we should not accept Edward Zwick's rousing and elevating movie Defiance (which opened in Little Rock and Northwest Arkansas on Friday), about the exploits of the Bielski partisans who fought Nazis and saved Jews during World War II, to be much like the historical record. Movies designed to educate as well as entertain succeed as history or drama because of the essential dissimilarities of the disciplines.
History is most responsibly understood as a mosaic of probabilities or as something like a babble of voices from which emerges a fallible consensus of opinion. Narratives give us focused, if varied, points of view, and storytellers elide, forget and filter whatever facts they believe they possess. About the best you can hope for in a movie's presentation of history is that it is not an overt lie.
What we can know about the exploits of the Bielski brothers, who took to the forests near the Polish-Belorussian border, is limited, colored by wishfulness, prejudice and ongoing political agendas.
We understand the scoreboard, that they saved some 1,200 Jews who otherwise would have been exterminated by the Nazis. We know of anecdotes, reported by historians, most notably Nechama Tec, who painstakingly researched the nonfiction book that served as source material for Zwick and screenwriter Clay Fohman. She even managed to interview an aged Tuvia Bielski, the eldest brother and leader of the band of partisans, before his death.
"One thing you cannot do is bowdlerize history," Zwick says. "You can't reinvent. You can and do compress, edit and dramatize. That's what we did."
And you can tell a story. Zwick's story is about how surviving is an act of defiance. The Bielskis created a community with a hospital and a school where all Jewish refugees - even those without the means to fight the Nazis or contribute much to the common good - were welcome. Tuvia Bielski, a pragmatic peasant farmer with a rough streak, saved as many Jews as Oskar Schindler.
In doing that, he and his brothers must have been ruthless. They took food from Polish farmers, they took revenge on those who collaborated with the Nazis and hunted Jews for bounties. The film shows this side of the Bielski partisans, especially in an early scene where Tuvia (played by Daniel Craig, the latest James Bond) executes a Polish police officer responsible for the death of the Bielskis' parents.
Zwick and Fohman dramatize the ongoing debate over whether it was better to seek to kill Nazis or to save Jews by having Tuvia - the Moses figure - break with his more aggressive brother Zus (Liev Schreiber). After a monumental fistfight, Zus sulks off to join a Russian partisan unit and harass German troops.
Schreiber is also a filmmaker, and his film Everything Is Illuminated is in part an examination of his Jewish heritage. Part of the reason to do this film, he admits, was as a corrective to the myth of Jewish timidity in the face of barbarism, the insidious idea that the victims of the Holocaust were to some degree complicit with their exterminators. Part of the problem with exploding this myth is the general reluctance of Jews who resisted to tell their stories.
"In researching the Holocaust ... trying to speak to survivors, looking at documentaries and things like that, I found that there were very few people who were willing to talk to me," Schreiber says. "Very few people who had been in the actual thick of it. They just didn't want to talk about it and they wanted to know why I wanted to talk about it. They were suspicious of me. ... Acting in a film was not a good enough reason for them to talk about it. As I researched the Bielskis themselves, I kind of started to see maybe the possibility of why they didn't want to talk about it."
There is, Schreiber says, a "moral ambiguity" that attaches to these survivors, who feel a guilt at having lived through what destroyed others - just as able but less lucky - coupled with a shame at some of the things they had to do to survive.
Schreiber alludes to a story in the Polish press that questions the film's portrayal of the Bielskis as heroes, pointing to a government investigation of the partisans' possible participation in a massacre of civilians in the Polish town of Naliboki. (The story has been denied by descendants of the Bielskis, and Tec, the leading historical authority on the subject, has described the report as "total lies.")
"Maybe I shouldn't be telling you this, but they were not angels," Schreiber says. "In Nechama Tec's book there's a story about a neighbor who let his goat under the fence to graze in their pasture and the two brothers went over to the guy and beat him within an inch of his life. This is long before the Germans came. ... These are guys who could be violent. They were tough Jews. And once they lose their parents, they, well, some of the things they did were quite violent and horrible."
American GIs talked of the "Bielski enema" - a particularly ugly method of executing a German officer with a hand grenade. From the perspective of Polish farmers who felt compelled to obey their German occupiers, the Bielskis could very well be characterized as robbers and burglars, as terrorists who decapitated some peasants they judged collaborators.
"That's one reason they didn't talk much," Schreiber says. "I think these guys did things they didn't care to remember and don't care to discuss. We could have a dialectic about how heroic they were - they understood that better than anyone."
Schreiber and Craig had the opportunity to meet the descendants of the Bielskis - the brothers emigrated to New York after the war - while on the set in Lithuania, about 100 miles from the woods where the brothers made camp. They found it intimidating - Schreiber said he "kind of hid" from the family when they made their set visits, while Craig called his meeting with them "strange."
"Because it's a family that's so full of life," Craig says, "and it wasn't really helpful to ask them direct questions about how Tuvia was, because this is an interpretation of how he was at this time, not when he was an older man."
But Craig saw in the sons and grandsons the genetic mark of Tuvia and Zus.
"These were big, robust guys," he says. "[Tuvia and Zus] were exactly that - big men who obviously bulldozed their way through this situation and survived ... and kept this community together."
Craig is, surprisingly considering he's best known as the iconic Bond, a rather diffident and almost delicate man who is obviously uncomfortable with the attention he must endure to promote a film.
"Look, people have intimated that I had a problem with the press," he says. "But I never had a problem with the press. I just find this bloody awkward. It's difficult at the best of times. ... But there's no point making a movie like this one and then getting all Greta Garbo about it and hiding away and saying, 'I don't want to talk, leave me alone.' I want to get this out and have people see it."
When someone suggests that Defiance is a kind of genre movie, a piece with dozens of other movies about the Holocaust with their roots in real stories, Craig looks sad.
"A genre movie suggests someone cynically trying to sell something," he says. "People make horror films because they're guaranteed to make money. This film is not guaranteed to make money. Everybody knows this. We all did this for love. To say this fits into a genre is offensive. We all did this movie because it inspired us. This film deals with an incredibly important part of recent history that's affected us all."
source: http://www.nwanews.com/adg/Style/250066/
BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. - A filmmaker chooses what kind of movie he wants to make, knowing that no movie can reasonably represent all views and perspectives. If a film concerns historical events then history will be sculpted and groomed into something like a story, a manageable legend.
So we should not accept Edward Zwick's rousing and elevating movie Defiance (which opened in Little Rock and Northwest Arkansas on Friday), about the exploits of the Bielski partisans who fought Nazis and saved Jews during World War II, to be much like the historical record. Movies designed to educate as well as entertain succeed as history or drama because of the essential dissimilarities of the disciplines.
History is most responsibly understood as a mosaic of probabilities or as something like a babble of voices from which emerges a fallible consensus of opinion. Narratives give us focused, if varied, points of view, and storytellers elide, forget and filter whatever facts they believe they possess. About the best you can hope for in a movie's presentation of history is that it is not an overt lie.
What we can know about the exploits of the Bielski brothers, who took to the forests near the Polish-Belorussian border, is limited, colored by wishfulness, prejudice and ongoing political agendas.
We understand the scoreboard, that they saved some 1,200 Jews who otherwise would have been exterminated by the Nazis. We know of anecdotes, reported by historians, most notably Nechama Tec, who painstakingly researched the nonfiction book that served as source material for Zwick and screenwriter Clay Fohman. She even managed to interview an aged Tuvia Bielski, the eldest brother and leader of the band of partisans, before his death.
"One thing you cannot do is bowdlerize history," Zwick says. "You can't reinvent. You can and do compress, edit and dramatize. That's what we did."
And you can tell a story. Zwick's story is about how surviving is an act of defiance. The Bielskis created a community with a hospital and a school where all Jewish refugees - even those without the means to fight the Nazis or contribute much to the common good - were welcome. Tuvia Bielski, a pragmatic peasant farmer with a rough streak, saved as many Jews as Oskar Schindler.
In doing that, he and his brothers must have been ruthless. They took food from Polish farmers, they took revenge on those who collaborated with the Nazis and hunted Jews for bounties. The film shows this side of the Bielski partisans, especially in an early scene where Tuvia (played by Daniel Craig, the latest James Bond) executes a Polish police officer responsible for the death of the Bielskis' parents.
Zwick and Fohman dramatize the ongoing debate over whether it was better to seek to kill Nazis or to save Jews by having Tuvia - the Moses figure - break with his more aggressive brother Zus (Liev Schreiber). After a monumental fistfight, Zus sulks off to join a Russian partisan unit and harass German troops.
Schreiber is also a filmmaker, and his film Everything Is Illuminated is in part an examination of his Jewish heritage. Part of the reason to do this film, he admits, was as a corrective to the myth of Jewish timidity in the face of barbarism, the insidious idea that the victims of the Holocaust were to some degree complicit with their exterminators. Part of the problem with exploding this myth is the general reluctance of Jews who resisted to tell their stories.
"In researching the Holocaust ... trying to speak to survivors, looking at documentaries and things like that, I found that there were very few people who were willing to talk to me," Schreiber says. "Very few people who had been in the actual thick of it. They just didn't want to talk about it and they wanted to know why I wanted to talk about it. They were suspicious of me. ... Acting in a film was not a good enough reason for them to talk about it. As I researched the Bielskis themselves, I kind of started to see maybe the possibility of why they didn't want to talk about it."
There is, Schreiber says, a "moral ambiguity" that attaches to these survivors, who feel a guilt at having lived through what destroyed others - just as able but less lucky - coupled with a shame at some of the things they had to do to survive.
Schreiber alludes to a story in the Polish press that questions the film's portrayal of the Bielskis as heroes, pointing to a government investigation of the partisans' possible participation in a massacre of civilians in the Polish town of Naliboki. (The story has been denied by descendants of the Bielskis, and Tec, the leading historical authority on the subject, has described the report as "total lies.")
"Maybe I shouldn't be telling you this, but they were not angels," Schreiber says. "In Nechama Tec's book there's a story about a neighbor who let his goat under the fence to graze in their pasture and the two brothers went over to the guy and beat him within an inch of his life. This is long before the Germans came. ... These are guys who could be violent. They were tough Jews. And once they lose their parents, they, well, some of the things they did were quite violent and horrible."
American GIs talked of the "Bielski enema" - a particularly ugly method of executing a German officer with a hand grenade. From the perspective of Polish farmers who felt compelled to obey their German occupiers, the Bielskis could very well be characterized as robbers and burglars, as terrorists who decapitated some peasants they judged collaborators.
"That's one reason they didn't talk much," Schreiber says. "I think these guys did things they didn't care to remember and don't care to discuss. We could have a dialectic about how heroic they were - they understood that better than anyone."
Schreiber and Craig had the opportunity to meet the descendants of the Bielskis - the brothers emigrated to New York after the war - while on the set in Lithuania, about 100 miles from the woods where the brothers made camp. They found it intimidating - Schreiber said he "kind of hid" from the family when they made their set visits, while Craig called his meeting with them "strange."
"Because it's a family that's so full of life," Craig says, "and it wasn't really helpful to ask them direct questions about how Tuvia was, because this is an interpretation of how he was at this time, not when he was an older man."
But Craig saw in the sons and grandsons the genetic mark of Tuvia and Zus.
"These were big, robust guys," he says. "[Tuvia and Zus] were exactly that - big men who obviously bulldozed their way through this situation and survived ... and kept this community together."
Craig is, surprisingly considering he's best known as the iconic Bond, a rather diffident and almost delicate man who is obviously uncomfortable with the attention he must endure to promote a film.
"Look, people have intimated that I had a problem with the press," he says. "But I never had a problem with the press. I just find this bloody awkward. It's difficult at the best of times. ... But there's no point making a movie like this one and then getting all Greta Garbo about it and hiding away and saying, 'I don't want to talk, leave me alone.' I want to get this out and have people see it."
When someone suggests that Defiance is a kind of genre movie, a piece with dozens of other movies about the Holocaust with their roots in real stories, Craig looks sad.
"A genre movie suggests someone cynically trying to sell something," he says. "People make horror films because they're guaranteed to make money. This film is not guaranteed to make money. Everybody knows this. We all did this for love. To say this fits into a genre is offensive. We all did this movie because it inspired us. This film deals with an incredibly important part of recent history that's affected us all."
source: http://www.nwanews.com/adg/Style/250066/
********** spoiler ****************
Complicated, human "Defiance" tracks Jews fleeing Nazis
There's a moment in "Defiance" which sets it apart from the Hollywood cheese-fest it so easily could have been. Driven from their makeshift camps in the woods by a mortar attack, hundreds of Jews are fleeing Nazi troops when they find themselves on the shores of an immense body of water. A river? A bog? It's not clear. They have children and elderly people in their numbers and are exhausted. They turn to their leader, Tuvia Bielski (Daniel Craig) for guidance. What should they do now? They cannot cross the water, surely, but there are Nazis not far behind them, so going back is impossible.
In a more feel-good sort of film, Tuvia would have had a moment of indecision and then told them what to do, his eyes blazing with manly conviction. Here, he crouches on the ground and shakes, overcome by his terror and indecision. It is someone else who figures out the best course of action, while Tuvia is incapacitated. It's a very human moment in a film packed with human moments. These characters on the big screen are not perfect avatars of wartime struggle and suffering; they are real people.
"Defiance" is based on a true story, and it definitely feels like one. There are a few of the requisite dramatic wartime shots and it occasionally falls prey to clichŽ but these characters are complicated and human, and nothing is simple.
In 1941 Belarus, near the beginning of World War II, the Nazis have invaded. Tuvia Bielski and his brothers, Zus (Liev Schreiber), Asael (Jamie Bell), and young Aron (George MacKay) flee to the woods when their parents are murdered by Nazi-sympathizing police officers. It isn't long before they run across other Jews fleeing similar fate. They themselves have been on the run from the law before (there's mention of a family bootlegging operation), so they know what to do, and soon they are taking other refugee Jews under their wings.
The story grows organically, as the brothers make choices and then react to the consequences of those choices. There are conflicts about how active an anti-Nazi role to take, about what sorts of people to accept into the group, and so on. Tuvia must deal with Zus's hotheadedness, insubordination among his followers, and other problems. The Nazis are ever-present but rarely-seen, a malevolent force out beyond the trees which occasionally makes terrifying incursions in attempts to capture these defiant Jews.
Craig and Schreiber deliver masterful performances. Their characters' hearts are in the right place, but along the way they make mistakes and do a few truly dreadful things. Both actors show the humanity of their characters without sacrificing their strengths.
The story is a complex and messy one, which suggests to me that the director and screenwriters stuck close to the actual events. Real life is not tidy, especially during war. "Defiance" is all the more inspiring for its realism: that a group as flawed and human as these could accomplish something almost impossible gives one hope for the future.
source: http://www.fremontbulletin.com/ci_11528956
Complicated, human "Defiance" tracks Jews fleeing Nazis
There's a moment in "Defiance" which sets it apart from the Hollywood cheese-fest it so easily could have been. Driven from their makeshift camps in the woods by a mortar attack, hundreds of Jews are fleeing Nazi troops when they find themselves on the shores of an immense body of water. A river? A bog? It's not clear. They have children and elderly people in their numbers and are exhausted. They turn to their leader, Tuvia Bielski (Daniel Craig) for guidance. What should they do now? They cannot cross the water, surely, but there are Nazis not far behind them, so going back is impossible.
In a more feel-good sort of film, Tuvia would have had a moment of indecision and then told them what to do, his eyes blazing with manly conviction. Here, he crouches on the ground and shakes, overcome by his terror and indecision. It is someone else who figures out the best course of action, while Tuvia is incapacitated. It's a very human moment in a film packed with human moments. These characters on the big screen are not perfect avatars of wartime struggle and suffering; they are real people.
"Defiance" is based on a true story, and it definitely feels like one. There are a few of the requisite dramatic wartime shots and it occasionally falls prey to clichŽ but these characters are complicated and human, and nothing is simple.
In 1941 Belarus, near the beginning of World War II, the Nazis have invaded. Tuvia Bielski and his brothers, Zus (Liev Schreiber), Asael (Jamie Bell), and young Aron (George MacKay) flee to the woods when their parents are murdered by Nazi-sympathizing police officers. It isn't long before they run across other Jews fleeing similar fate. They themselves have been on the run from the law before (there's mention of a family bootlegging operation), so they know what to do, and soon they are taking other refugee Jews under their wings.
The story grows organically, as the brothers make choices and then react to the consequences of those choices. There are conflicts about how active an anti-Nazi role to take, about what sorts of people to accept into the group, and so on. Tuvia must deal with Zus's hotheadedness, insubordination among his followers, and other problems. The Nazis are ever-present but rarely-seen, a malevolent force out beyond the trees which occasionally makes terrifying incursions in attempts to capture these defiant Jews.
Craig and Schreiber deliver masterful performances. Their characters' hearts are in the right place, but along the way they make mistakes and do a few truly dreadful things. Both actors show the humanity of their characters without sacrificing their strengths.
The story is a complex and messy one, which suggests to me that the director and screenwriters stuck close to the actual events. Real life is not tidy, especially during war. "Defiance" is all the more inspiring for its realism: that a group as flawed and human as these could accomplish something almost impossible gives one hope for the future.
source: http://www.fremontbulletin.com/ci_11528956
-
Daskedusken
- Posts: 14137
- Joined: Thu May 31, 2007 8:14 pm
- Location: Always heading somewhere
-
Elaine_Figgis
- Administrator
- Posts: 7195
- Joined: Sat Jun 16, 2007 7:27 pm
Mariah, how about moving your review to the Movies section, to keep all fan reviews together.Mariah wrote:I finally saw Defiance everyone!
I'm sure you don't need me to tell you it was amazing. But I will anyways. The movie was a little over 2 hours but I still found myself wanting it to last longer. It had such a powerful story. Daniel did an awesome job with his accent and the Russian sounded close to fluent. However, nothing I say will do this movie justice, it was just that good.
5 stars.
I wish/hope Daniel gets nominated for an award because the performance he did was so moving and inspiring. He deserves every bit of recognition.
Crazy!