Defiance

The thing about Sky television is that there's always something on, but it's probably a documentary about Nazi's.

When my brother comes around we often find that the only thing worth watching within that crucial after-work slot in the schedule is some program involving Ray Mears. Unfortunately more often that not this turns out to be the inferior "Extreme Survival" series (or possibly that one where he builds a boat) were he narrates the tale of some poor schmoes living it rough. We both agree that the best of this generally rotten bunch is the one in which escaped Jews evade and fight the Nazi's by building an Ewok village in the vast forests of Belarus.

Defiance is a film about those Jews and that village. Less focused on lighting fires than the Mear's documentary, it follows the camps leader and his brothers, the Bielskis as they accidentally form a community and become heroes.

There's a emotional balance to be struck whenever a story is told of within the horrors of the Holocaust. It's wounds are so profound that no mixture of images and sound will ever truly convey them, they can't be overlooked yet they risk overpowering any other tale you may wish to tell around them. Defiance, for my money fumbles this a little. While it does occasionally raise it's head (for example in one especially memorable scene in which Daniel Craig lets his people have their rage rather than doing the more obviously heroic thing), it didn't really impress upon me that larger picture, the emotional value of what they were doing in the woods. It's very insular in that it deals with internal issues and rivalries, which I felt didn't really do justice to the camps legend and legacy.

But despite a sense that it failed to lend voice to things it should have, that even within the camp there was a good deal more to the story of survival (perhaps some of Mear's bushcraft was indeed in order) than the guys in charge, I did like almost all of the things it was able to say.

The three Bielski brothers (played by Craig, Liev Schreiber and Jamie Bell) are all wonderful. The film is essentially about how they each deal with the greatness that is thrust upon them and as luck would have it it is in different, subtle and fascinating ways. There's rivalry, sacrifice and a large helping of questioning what it means to be a hero. Much like Munich, Craig's accent is a touch off putting at first, but it is one of the best bits of acting I've seen him do in some time as a man who's idealism is slightly out of sync with his capabilities.

My usual biographical unease was in this case tempered by a working knowledge of events, and while that left definite edges of a failed story of the overall camp, I think I choose to see it as a successful character study of remarkable historical figures.