Defiance

Edward Zwick's Defiance is a well-meaning film, made with consummate professionalism, plenty of muscle, and a bit of Yiddish conscience, but even its 137-minute running time cannot help but reduce the scope of the Bielski Brigade story until it feels unduly small.

Defiance dramatizes the first year and a half (1941 to 1942-ish) in the life of the Jewish partisan group founded by the Bielski brothers -; Tuvia (Daniel Craig), Zus (Liev Schreiber), Asael (Jamie Bell), and Aron (George MacKay) -; and sustained in the Belorussian forests first by dozens, then hundreds of Jews fleeing from slaughter in the ghettos. The Bielskis and their comrades -; fighters and farmers; young and old; men, women, and children -; formed a complex collective society, saving countless lives while fighting the Nazis and their collaborators. The majority of the Jews within the Bielskis' ranks managed to survive the war.

Their true story is essentially meandering, and the writers of Defiance, Clayton Frohman and Edward Zwick, fumble their attempt to shoehorn three years of intermittent, episodic drama into a conventional three-act narrative. Documentaries, printed media, and Spielberg's Shoah Foundation have collected enough gripping anecdotes from former Bielski Brigade fighters to sustain several films. Instead, Frohman and Zwick build Defiance around a fictional conflict between Tuvia and Zus -; as though the reality of fighting and surviving in the deep Belorussian forest were not fraught enough with dramatic possibilities. Focusing on the four Bielski brothers is an acceptable concession to the vicissitudes of cinematic storytelling -; which usually demand a sole protagonist -; but with so many of the Brigade partisans surviving to bear witness, the film's writers have a wealth of vibrant, completely-real secondary characters they could have drawn from. It is therefore disappointing that so many of the supporting characters are written and portrayed as archetypes, spouting awkward, portentous dialogue. Even able performers like Mark Feuerstein and Allan Corduner cannot save the eons-old "young Marxist vs. old Talmud scholar" debate from looking and sounding like anything other than two actors going through the motions in period dress.

In spite of its screenplay's liabilities, Defiance boasts solid performances. Daniel Craig brings plenty of gravitas, and portrays Tuvia as a man driven to violence, but governed by conscience. Liev Schreiber is magnetic as Zus, presented as the coarser and more ruthless of the brothers, but Jamie Bell has the most fully-rounded performance as Asael, who believably passes from puberty to manhood over the film's time span. Alexa Davalos and Mia Wasikowska also make the most of their few scenes as the wives of Tuvia and Asael. Although their characters show a spirit of independence when faced with the Brigade's proscribed gender roles, the film woefully underplays the historic role of women as fighters with the Bielskis. One searing image ends up conveying the totality of the female partisan experience: an attractive young woman fires from a barricade at an advancing line of Nazi soldiers. She is mortally wounded, but keeps firing her machine gun. When she finally collapses and dies, her finger holds fast to the trigger of the machine gun, which continues to unload on the Nazis.

Director Edward Zwick delivers on most scenes, but falters with others. Zwick is a consummate director of battle scenes -; so good, in fact, that a film about partisan fighters from the director of Glory, The Last Samurai, and Blood Diamond should have more than a few scenes of actual combat. Zwick also breaks a cardinal rule of filmmaking to no good effect: he shows Zus planting mines below railroad tracks, but withholds the explosive pay-off. The fierce deprivations of winter in the Belorussian forest are vividly portrayed, as are some of the brutal choices faced by the Bielski partisans. However, the film's passages without explicit conflict -; scenes intended only to show aspects of life in the forest community -; fall flat on arrival.

Defiance ends with the now-traditional on-screen text and photographs of the actual participants, but only begins the story of Jewish resistance and self-determination. The episodic and thrilling true story of the Bielski Brigade would have been better served by the larger canvas of a television miniseries. It is my hope that other films, by other writers and directors, will pick up where Defiance leaves off, and instead of dramatizing only the act of resistance, they will attempt to dramatize its meaning.

                                                          Stuart Weinstock