Defiance

Based on true events (the film is an adaptation of Nechama Tec's Defiance: The Bielski Partisans), the untold story of three Polish brothers who, after the death of their parents at the hands of Nazis and Polish sympathizers, form a resistance movement and ultimately save 1200 Jews from the Nazi death camps. They survive by their wits in the forests of Belrussia, each of the brothers, a leader, but each in their own way, sometimes at cross-purposes.

Some of the reviews thus far have been critical of the script - a bit campy, too stylized. 

But I don't agree.

I found the script terribly moving, spare in its content - quick and desperate, and to the point. These are terribly hard times, and no one has either the time or the energy to engage in lengthy conversation. Several intellectuals join the camp, and their banter is more than enjoyable, but the brothers, having taken on the protection of the infirm, the elderly and children, bear an enormous responsiblity.

One of the themes is the question of violence - at one point, "They may hunt us like animals, but we'll not be animals."

As my son notes, "Edward Zwick [director] doesn't know how to make a bad movie."

Beautifully filmed in the forests, the imagery of the seasons stands in stark contrast to their desperate hunger and constant fear. How any of them made it is beyond me, but the iron-willed leadership of Tuvia Bielski (Daniel Craig) sees them through.

His leadership is challenged at times by his more violently inclined brother, Zuz, played so adeptly by Liev Schreiber, who, at one point, joins a Russian partisan brigade because he wants to fight. Welcomed as a "comrade," Zuz nonetheless faces a constant low-level Antisemitism - though contrary to "Party" policy, it's there - "Do Jews fight?" "This one does" and does so with ruthless abandon - is he trying to prove the point?

We watch the youngest brother - Asael (Jamie Bell) - come into his own as a leader - though of a more gentle and thoughtful kind than either of his brothers.

The camp is composed of all the usual suspects - the angry fighter who wants more food for the men who get it, whereas camp rules are simple: everyone eats the same amount, at the same time.

The intellectuals who talk about it; the sick the dying ... and "forest love." Life in its fullness - life as we all know it - a microcosm of humanity, and perhaps that's the real tragedy of it all - we are all so much alike, but how we can distance one another and then look at one another with hatred. The human mystery - the folly of our story.

At one point, they capture a young German soldier who pleads for his life. What shall they do? Before anyone can decide, he's beaten to death, and every stroke against him, in the name of someone they've lost - brothers and sisters, parents and children - all of their anger and sorrow taken out on a young soldier in bloody reprisal. This is the way it is in such moments of time when humanness is driven to the edge.

Two of the brothers survive and immigrate to New York, to live quietly, without fanfare, never wanting their story told. The youngest brother joins the Red Army on its westward drive and is dead within six months.

A glorious, noble, story that needs to be told.

As we watch Israel pound Gaza, I have to ask: At what point does past suffering no longer justify present brutality? Just a question that rattles around inside my mind.

The acting is terrific; it's fun to see Daniel Craig in this powerfully nuanced role - the same complexity, a slightly ironic distance, he brings to the Bond character. Craig's a fine actor.

They all are, and hats of Zwick for bringing this powerful, evocative, story to the screen.

Along with Valkyrie, primal stories of Western history - stories that deserve to be told again and again, re-examined from every perspective, for such stories can never be exhausted in meaning, nor the questions they prompt!