'DEFIANCE': A new movie tells the powerful story of four Jewish brothers who saved 1,200 Jews from the Nazis by GOLDA SHIRA By GOLDA SHIRA, Senior Editor (01/08/2010) If you haven't been to a movie in years, go to this one. If you see nothing else this year, this is the one to see. "Defiance" is a visually breathtakingly beautiful film, which brings the viewer in as if we are there, amongst this band of four brothers who, having seen their parents murdered by the Nazis, escape into the woods. This awesomely accurate depiction of a true story was a life-changing experience for me. The film is artfully multi-textured and multi-leveled, all at the same time. It raises soul-wrenching questions about love, class differences, morality, community, faith, sibling and family relationships ... in essence, about life. And that is what this film so powerfully is; it is a tribute to life in all of its beauty and in all of its horror, all of its pain and all of its glory.
And most of all, it is a story of Ahavat Yisrael, of Jews loving each other; not just the theoretical or abstract, but the very messy, very complex and yet oh so very simple and profound love, unity, acceptance and responsibility we each and all share for the very life of each and every Jew.
The movie is based on the book "Defiance" written by Nechama Tec, who did interviews in the 1980s and 90s with several of the people portrayed in the film. In addition, there is another book, "The Bielski Brothers," by Peter Duffy, which also tells the heart rending, uplifting and deeply inspiring story of this three year slice of life of the Bielski brothers who, in late 1941, went into hiding in the forests of Belarus. They hoped to survive the Nazis who had occupied the country. Soon, the brothers stumbled upon other Jews who were in the forest and even sought to save people who were still in the ghettoes.
The oldest brother, Tuvia, became the leader of what would become known as the Bielski Otriad, or Detachment. While other groups of partisans were small in number, usually about 50, and were made up almost exclusively of strong young men with machine guns, Tuvia decided his group would be different. The Bielski Otriad would take in any Jew who wanted to join, including what were known as the malbushim, colloquially "the useless ones"-the elderly, the sick, the intellectuals who knew nothing about fighting.
Eventually, more than 1,200 Jews would become part of the Bielski group. Some were fighters; others repaired weapons, while still others astonishingly put together a civil society, creating a makeshift hospital, a mill, a metal-shop, a bakery, a bathhouse and even a theater and synagogue. Amidst the surrounding horror, this secret encampment grew so full of life they named it "Jerusalem in the Woods."
The village in the movie further comes to life via a diverse ensemble of supporting characters. Two of the most intriguing are Shimon Haretz and Isaac Malbin, as intellectuals locked in an existential disputation about the spiritual life versus the secular, an argument that continues even as battle rages around them.
Shimon, once Tuvia's schoolteacher and a deeply religious man, embodies another of the film's themes: the quest to understand G-d's place in a world of such suffering and destruction. Playing the role is Allan Corduner, the award-winning British actor. For Corduner, the part was especially resonant, because his grandfather died in Auschwitz.
Paired with Shimon is his friend Isaac Malbin, portrayed by Mark Feuerstein ("The West Wing" and "What Women Want"). Says Feuerstein: "Shimon and Malbin represent a central dialectic in Jewish intellectual life: brilliant minds trying to come to terms with the overwhelming horror of what was happening. And they have a relationship like any Jewish family relationship, where yelling and squabbling and arguing is a form of love. In a sense, they keep each other alive through their arguments."
As for the leaders, "the Bielskis weren't saints," director Edward Zwick stated. "They were flawed heroes, which is what makes them so real and so fascinating. Yet I think they also found within themselves something unexpected and magnificent. As their community grew, they were forced to become real leaders, to take on huge responsibility and discover their finest selves. They faced any number of difficult moral dilemmas that the movie seeks to dramatize: Does one have to become a monster to fight monsters? Does one have to sacrifice his humanity to save humanity?"
Other questions faced in the forest were of a more intimate nature. "Even in the most trying of times, especially in wartime, love and longing are never absent. People who have lost everything are in even greater need of comfort and companionship," says Zwick.
The director gave the role of Tuvia to Daniel Craig, otherwise now known for his James Bond role. Zwick regarded Craig as having "the strength, charisma and humility of Tuvia Bielski." Craig also remarkably physically resembles Tuvia.
Craig said about the relationship of his character and Lilka, the woman Tuvia meets in the woods, "In the true story, Tuvia and Lilka stayed together for the rest of their lives, which is quite amazing. I think in that situation your partner becomes more than just your friend or your lover - they become someone who keeps you human and who boosts your survival instincts to a higher level."
All of these aspects of survival, of life, grew while the group was constantly on the move, continually escaping as the Nazis pursued them.
The fact that, under such pressure, so many rose to the occasion and discovered unexpected bravery and compassion, is also underscored in the screenplay. Indeed, Zwick thinks the most important character in the movie isn't a singular individual, but rather the community they create together.
"Tuvia, Zus and Asael each have their own strength but the group is what becomes invincible," says Zwick. "The community itself is a character that begins to express its own will and identity; a fascinating dynamic develops between the expression of an individual's needs and the group's survival as a whole."
When the Soviets finally liberated the area in 1944, the entire community, except for about 50, had miraculously survived. This was by far the largest and most successful armed Jewish rescue of Jews during World War II.
One of the most powerful aspects of "Defiance" is that it is the story of Jews of the Holocaust who do resist, who put forth every effort to not be victims, while also struggling not to lose their humanity and values under the absolutely most trying of times. A group of people who resist not by a decision to be Resistance or freedom fighters, but who find themselves in a woods, faced with the choice of if and how to go on. They grappled with choices with which we all grapple, no less heroically, in our daily lives.
It is G-d's amazing timing that this movie was released just after the Mumbai massacres, the Madoff mess, the stock market plummet and economic upheaval, as well as the grisly war in Gaza.
Jews are once again dazed, having the seeming securities and safety in our lives stripped away. We find ourselves "Into the Woods," as Broadway lyricist and playwright Stephen Sondheim would say. The New Yorker review of the film echoed, "The movie is a kind of realistic fairy tale set in a forest newly enchanted by the sanctified work of staying alive."
Now we are struggling with the very same issues, just in a different way. The same questions of survival and self-defense, of violence from necessity while endeavoring to be humane and "a light to the nations" endure. And so do the presence, the seemingly obscured loving-kindness, the guidance of G-d's unseen hand, so to speak.
"Defiance" is the vision of native Chicagoan Zwick, who directed, co-produced and co-wrote it. Zwick is well known for his work on many productions, including the TV series, "thirtysomething" and films such as "Blood Diamond" and "Glory." But even if those weren't your favorites, don't write this one off. It is truly a work of art.
In an article Zwick wrote for the New York Times, he recounts how the pictures he saw of the Holocaust, "became, to an adolescent boy, not only a morbid obsession but also a source of shame. And so, 30 years later, when my childhood friend, Clay Frohman suggested we make the film, I groaned, "Not another movie about victims." "No," he said, "this is a story about Jewish heroes. Like the Maccabees..."
While attending a baseball game, co-screenwriter Frohman gave Tec's book to his good friend, Zwick. "As a filmmaker, Ed has that ability to combine the intimate and the epic," says Frohman.
A single reading was all it took for Zwick to understand Frohman's passion for the story, and he determined to do everything he could to bring it to the screen. Thus, began a collaboration that was to take more than ten years before finding its way to the screen.
The process of writing "Defiance" was lengthy and carefully considered. The script went through many iterations. "Writing this movie was always an act of faith," says Frohman. "I never imagined we'd actually one day wind up in Vilnius, where my grandfather was born, making this movie with such an amazing cast. For me, it was the realization of a life-long dream."
For Zwick, his purpose was to "give voice to something that never had a voice, and would now be understood." He continued in an interview with this writer, that he tried to talk about the difference between passivity and powerlessness. "There is a mythology of Jews' unwillingness to resist what happened to them. That makes the tragedy greater."
Zwick explained, "...contrary to the conventional wisdom, the impulse to fight back was everywhere: from the streets of Vilnius to the tree forests of Bialystok, even unto the concrete slabs of Sobibor and Treblinka, thousands of Jews doing whatever they could ... against overwhelming odds. Learning of these defiant acts awakened in me something utterly primitive and deeply personal, a wave of awe, humility and admiration. This story needed to be told.
"These flawed men confronted daunting moral decisions-whether to seek revenge or to rescue others, how to recreate a sense of community among those who had lost everything, how to keep faith alive when all evidence was that G-d had turned away-and gradually, reluctantly, even, they rose to the task, discovering in themselves something extraordinary."
"Keeping faith, it can be said, is yet another form of resistance."
Regarding the making of the movie, Zwick confided that, "It was as if my work were being helped by an unseen hand." He also relates that while peering through the camera for filming, he asked himself questions, which, I, this reviewer, think that the movie asks the audience. "How would I have fared in the forest? Would I have dared to go into the forest at all?"
Zwick told me that there is much in the movie which resonates with Biblical imagery. He said that the relationship of Tuvia and his brother, Zus, played by Liev Schreiber, reminded Zwick of the relationship between "Moses and Aaron, where one spoke for the other, and together they formed a unit." Zwick also recounted that the moment where one brother reaches for a rock and threateningly holds it over his brother's head is another.
While Biblical themes and imagery are a subtle undercurrent of the film, what is apparent is Tec's portrait of a society turned upside down. The "lower class" macho men became the ones looked to for protection and shelter while the secularly and religiously educated "upper class," formerly admired, especially by the women, as well as by society in general, are no longer seen in the same esteem as before. They do, however, provide an ethical, moral and spiritual embrace around the film.
Zwick also explained about the difficulty of obtaining funding for the picture, as well as the challenges of selecting which pieces of this profoundly inspiring story to include in a tiny two-hour format.
The cinematography by Eduardo Serra is mind-boggling. Combined with the costumes and the setting, it is visually like a magnificent moving painting. The music is heart piercingly poignant, an often lone violin, played by Joshua Bell. Says Bell: "I don't do a lot of film scores, but this story was just so interesting. I come from a Jewish heritage - in fact, my grandmother lived very close to where the story takes place - yet I was shocked that I'd never heard this story. It was eye opening for me."
The screenplay, co-written by Zwick and Frohman, is so well crafted that there are lines you will want to remember forever.
Coincidentally ("coincidence is G-d's way of remaining anonymous"), as I was leaving the screening, I met Aliza Abrams, the granddaughter of the youngest of the four Bielski brothers. This lovely young woman related that there had been a previous private viewing just for relatives of the brothers. Aliza commented that the gathering of family from all over, many of whom had never met, was, in itself, an overwhelmingly emotional experience. She said that as they looked around the room, they had the startling realization that they all, regardless of generation, looked like each other. They also discovered as they compared family stories, that this movie was, "99% accurate."
Regarding the movie, wrote David Denby in the New Yorker, "The picture offers the most moving account we've ever had of how an ordinary, rather disagreeable man, challenged and then electrified by catastrophe, grows into a great leader-in this case, a man possessed of an uncanny sense of timing, authority and force."
Denby said that he walked out of the movie, "slightly stunned." For me, as well as the woman next to me, it was definitely a three-hankie movie, as much, if not more, for the beauty as for the pathos.
Zwick, in his New York Times piece, described how the making of the movie affected his perception of his own family, particularly relatives who were assimilated American bookies. Zwick came to see the threads of connection between these uncles and the characters in the movie.
I am most grateful for that insight as I, too, come from a family that had its Damon Runyon bookie relatives, colorful characters whose lifestyle and values left me puzzled and often embarrassed.
When one passed away recently, I called a yeshiva to ask that Kaddish be recited for this cigar chomping, back-room poker-playing cousin. The secretary refused my request, despite my offer to pay the standard sum to subsidize Torah learning on my cousin's soul's behalf.
I protested that though this man's moral character may not be up to yeshiva standards, he nevertheless was a holy Jewish soul, "created in the likeness of G-d." The secretary gently explained that this man, who had had no visible religious connection, had, in fact, donated regularly and much to this Torah institution his entire life, providing for needy families and that he had arranged, before his demise, for the payment and saying of Kaddish.
The lesson about my cousin, and one of the lessons of the movie, is the sacredness and often hidden G-dliness, as well as "gadlus," greatness, of each Jewish soul.
While that greatness is an inherent part of us, (we actually inherited it in our spiritual DNA from our forefathers and foremothers), it is our avodah, our spiritual work, to bring that concealed greatness into being revealed in this world. Part of what is so inspiring about "Defiance" is how we witness, we feel part of the transformation of poor, broken, people into life-affirming richly contributing partners who discover and utilize abilities and yes, greatness, that they never knew they possessed.
This movie was nothing less than transformative for me. Zwick quotes a friend who told him during the making of the movie, "The forest has always been a place of transformation. Think of the lost children in Grimm's fairy tales or the characters in Shakespeare's "Twelfth Night." (Or Sondheim's "Into the Woods.") And now it has changed you, too."
Wrote Zwick, "As they had done for so many others, the Bielskis had led me home."
Me, too.
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