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BaftaBaby 
"Always entranced by cinema."
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 Posted - 12/18/2008 : 10:31:32
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Defiance
I so wanted to like - well admire - Edward Zwick's cine-adaptation of Nechama Tec's book about the Bielski Partisans. They were a band of Jewish anti-facist rebels from Belorusse who lived in the Naliboki Forest, gathering a growing number of people - including women and children - whom they trained as guerilla fighters. By the end of the War they'd saved about 1200 people from the death camps.
Mostly I wanted to be able to praise a film that countered all the ignorant taunts I'd grown up with that the Jews just let things happen to them. As though that were some excuse for Hitler.
The Bielski Brigade as they came to be called was started by four brothers and their lives were courageous and troubled. Circumstances overwhelm the sibling rivalry between the two older brothers, played with great commitment by Daniel Craig [Tuvia] an Liev Schreiber [Zus]. Each has had his wife and children murdered in raids, and they've become adept at distinguishing between the local Christians who help with provisions and those who will sell them out to occupying forces.
Since the story covers the four years of the rebels' forest existence, emotional rifts and alliances are taken as read. The younger brother Asael [Jamie Bell, rapidly expanding his range] pursues a romance with one of the girls who joins up with the brigade. Not only do the two older brothers also find "forest wives" - as they're called - but inevitably they fight for leadership. Zus and his followers leave to fight with the Soviet People's Army, who also live in the forest fighting the occupying Germans. The Soviet soldiers are virulent anti-Semites, but their commandant recognizes how helpful the Jewish brigade can be in raids. He protects them and gives them much welcome food and weapons.
In the hands of a more imaginative director and with a script which didn't continually fall over the boundary of soap opera, there are all the elements of an exciting tale. The wider cinema-going public certainly deserves to have such historical gaps filled with something more deserving of the truth. The sheer banality of some of the dialogue turns moments of significance into melodrama and demeans the reality.
What a shame.
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Salopian 
"Four ever European"
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Posted - 01/16/2009 : 00:39:26
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Excellent F.W.F.R. for this film, B.B.
I'll add my thoughts on the film later. |
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BaftaBaby
"Always entranced by cinema."
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Posted - 01/16/2009 : 01:08:10
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quote:
Originally posted by Salopian
Excellent F.W.F.R. for this film, B.B.
Why, thank you!
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Salopian
"Four ever European"
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Posted - 01/17/2009 : 04:13:07
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Here's the review. I love reviews where several things fit together. It's the combination of the Second World War fighters reference, but where band and brothers both fit this film more literally, with the expansion on the original's alliteration.
Anyway, onto the film. I liked it quite a lot more than you, but as I've noted before I unconsciously give a lot of leeway in terms of cinematic quality to true stories I either haven't heard of before or am particularly interested in.
On the other hand, I really hate facts being changed for a film, especially when there does not seem a very good reason. Quite a lot were changed here, as I found out when I decided to find out why the film had poor reviews. (I don't read reviews in advance but had seen it getting two stars etc.) Asael was the second of the (relevant) brothers, in his mid thirties. Zus was younger. And the boy Tuvia finds under the floorboards was another brother: I didn't pick up on that in the film, thinking him a cousin or neighbour. The Poles are up in arms  about the brothers being presented as Byelorussian when there is evidence they spoke Polish quite well and perhaps not Russian/Byelorussian at all. That's down to them wanting to present Polish people as having fought the Nazis as much as possible, so I mind that in principle more than practice since it doesn't misrepresent anything fundamental about the brothers. The main issue is the suggestion not hinted at by the film that they may have been involved in a massacre with the Soviet partisans. There doesn't seem to be that much evidence, but of course it could be true and if that turns out to be proven likely it will affect my view of the film considerably.
In the meantime, I liked it for all the expected heartstring-pulling reasons. The idea of rebels living in the woods is unavoidably romantic and of course a very well-established idea.
quote:
Originally posted by BaftaBabe
Mostly I wanted to be able to praise a film that countered all the ignorant taunts I'd grown up with that the Jews just let things happen to them. As though that were some excuse for Hitler.
It's interesting that you say this, because while watching the part with the people in the ghetto, I realised I'd honestly never thought about Jews in the War as being passive but that that idea did fit with how they are often portrayed. The film further emphasises this point by having the little boy ask about Tuvia (walking backwards and forwards on a white charger!) "Is he a Jew?!" I really cannot tell whether there is any accuracy in someone responding like that, but maybe there is, since perhaps those in urban areas had very little to do with Jewish people in the farming areas. (There's famously one black farmer in the U.K. and I've seen him say that other black people often respond with amazement when they encounter him.) Anyway, so this film is actually rather conflicted, in that in order to counter the stereotype you mention it assigns most characters to it to some degree, so that the Bielskis can contrast with it. (I very much doubt that anyone, Jewish or otherwise, would say to the working-class man saving their life in the middle of the forest, "I am an intellectual.") |
Edited by - Salopian on 01/17/2009 04:16:21 |
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Defiance
