Going Against the Grain...

This may come as a shock to you, but Daniel Craig (Quantum of Solace, Casino Royale) is starring in a movie this winter in which he’s only shirtless once. That may or may not have blown your mind, but if it didn’t, Edward Zwick’s new film Defiance just might. Starring Craig and Liev Schreiber, Zwick paints a fascinating true story of three Jewish brothers who escape from Nazi-occupied Poland to the Belarusian forest. It’s a feat in itself to make Daniel Craig believable as a Polish Jew, but Zwick doesn’t stop there; the story is both well crafted and expertly translated to the screen. Some may criticize the director for being overly conventional, but why try to distract from a great story by trying to reinvent the wheel?
Defiance tells the true story of the Bielski brothers, who escaped the Nazi occupation of Poland and set up camp (literally) in the woods of Belarus. While in hiding, the brothers decide to enact revenge on those who have wronged them, and eldest brother Tuvia (Craig) takes the biggest step by seeking out the murder of his parents and killing him in cold blood. This turn out to be a major turning point for Tuvia, and he determines that the best way for the brothers to defy the Nazis isn’t to spill more blood, but rather to do the opposite and save as many lives as possible. This puts Tuvia at odds with his brother Zus (Schreiber), who still believes that an eye for an eye is what’s best. The brothers’ once small camp soon evolves into a haven for all exalted Jews, with Tuvia having real trouble denying any of his brethren some shelter. Zus decides he’s tired of this path, so he joins the Russian contingent, abandoning the camp and leaving Tuvia with youngest brother Asael and countless other mouths to feed and protect. The story moves forward to detail the struggles and battles (verbal and physical) that erupt in the brothers’ lives over the next several months.
One of the most obvious differences between Defiance and other films about this subject matter is the presence of humor. In an interview with The Heights, Edward Zwick points out that he intended to honor the Jewish humor that came out of that time period by emphasizing the manner in which these oppressed people managed to cope with their being hunted. The laughs aren’t uproarious or incredibly frequent, but there’s a certain sarcastic element to much of the dialog between the brothers that in many ways makes the characters seem much more grounded and thankfully keeps them from seeming like unrealistic heroes. Additionally, many will be surprised to find out that we won’t see very many Nazis in the course of the narrative, and according to the director, this was quite deliberate. He noted that he always imagined the Nazi regime as anonymous, and that he wanted the antagonist to be somewhat subjective, and it’s certainly refreshing to focus on the infighting and drama in response to the looming villain rather than having everyone unite and immediately fight the regime.
From a technical and aesthetic perspective, Defiance shines. There’s a great amount of imagery to experience in each shot, especially the contrast between the different seasons that we experience in the jungle. The lush and seemingly welcoming woods in the first several months slowly deteriorate and freeze over as winter inches closer, and we begin to see the relationships and general health of the Bielski’s camp start to decay much like the environment around them. All of this builds up to a climactic final gunfight that is one of the best-edited battle sequences in recent memory. The cuts happen in such a way that the scene never once feels like a montage of explosions, but instead like a completely fluid sequence. In many ways, Defiance is one of the most cinematic films of the year, even though the story itself mostly deals with the notion of nonviolence as a form of resistance.
As usual, the film isn’t without a few flaws, but they’re all rather minor. It’s over two hours long, and there are several times where the audience gets slightly lost, but for the most part the film is very comprehensible. It’s pretty clear that the director’s vision was intended to be slightly longer, but for one reason or another it was decided that something needed to be cut. Unfortunately, what was cut was most of the exposition from the first act, so we are left with the first 20 minutes being somewhat rushed and confusing. After that misstep however, the story redeems itself, so the critique is more or less negligible.
With a powerful story, slick editing and a host of imagery, Defiance is a worthwhile adventure for anyone interested in a different side of the Holocaust, or anyone who’s looking to discover that Daniel Craig is actually quite a talented actor.
Grade: A-