Hola all. Massawyrm here.

Conventional wisdom states that, all things being equal, the film about the Holocaust will win the Oscar. Best picture, best actor, best score, best make-up. Whatever. It’s become something of a standardized joke – and a surefire way to win an Oscar pool (especially when it comes to Best Documentary picks.) That’s not to say that many winners haven’t been deserving. Just that there tends to be a clear bias towards them. So when Holocaust-era films come out during award season, it has begun to look less like there is a desire for these films, and more like a pandering towards the Academy. And the films get joked about – often undeservedly. And yet, occasionally you run across a film that feels entirely like pandering.

Such is the case with Edward Zwick’s new film Defiance. Of course, one could argue that most of Zwick’s films feel like pandering – especially the likes of Blood Diamond, (the albeit fantastic) The Last Samurai and Courage Under Fire. Having directed the outstanding film Glory, there seemed a lot of expectations upon him revisiting the war film. And sadly he fumbles this pretty badly.

It’s not that I so much hate Defiance as much as I simply resent it. It is the perfect example of a filmmaker trying to evoke sympathy for a film’s characters while being painfully obvious about his sweeping the occasional unpleasantness under the rug. Everything in this film is half-assed, from its emotional resonance to its action sequences. It seems to have no definite adherence to any particular aspect except to highlight the suffering of the Jews. That one point is made crystal clear. Life sucked for the Jews in WWII. And it particularly sucked for these few who escaped to the woods to face exposure, sickness, starvation and near ceaseless hunting by Nazi patrols. Their story is a fascinating one and one wrought with unending peril and suffering. It’s not that I don’t believe that this merits a film – just that it is clear that Zwick was not the guy to make it.

At first while I was watching it, I was trying to figure out why it wasn’t connecting with me. It just didn’t resonate. I thought perhaps you just can’t make a Jewish Holocaust action film. Then I remembered the brilliant Verhoeven film Black Book and all of this film’s problems instantly rose to the surface like skin on a soup. This film lacked the brass balls to tell the story as it needed to be told, but instead tried to white wash the little human details that could make it interesting.

You see, the film is about a group of Jews who all flee persecution at the hands of the Nazis and find themselves cobbling together in the middle of the forest. As most of the displaced are city types, it falls upon a family of three brothers (all woodland/farmer types) to lead and organize the group to be able to survive. These are all the recognizable stars of the film who couldn’t look less related if they tried – Daniel Craig, Liev Schreiber, and Jamie Bell. (In one almost laughable scene, Daniel Craig kicks some ass and a little girl asks her mother “Is he really a Jew?” “Yes he is!” – let that percolate for a moment.) With no land to farm and no income to purchase goods, the roving band of the displaced turn to becoming bandits, robbing local farms of food to feed the huddled, freezing masses. And this is told in a very Robin Hood sort of way. Not that they don’t find it unpleasant, but it is never given the weight it clearly deserves.

In one particularly glaring scene, a farmer delivering milk to the Nazis is held up at gunpoint and mugged of his supplies. This scene stresses that Tuvia Bielski’s (Craig) rules are that they only take half and do not harm the farmer. Seems fair enough, right? It’s all out of necessity. But the farmer says something that is written off – you see, he’s tasked by the Nazis to bring a certain amount of milk every day to feed their troops or they will murder his family. He’s not a Nazi or even German. He’s from Belorussia like all the heroes of the film. He’s as much a victim as they are. But when they let him live, he returns hours later with Nazi troops in tow. One man screams how they should have killed the farmer when they had a chance and the farmer is one of the first interlopers to catch a bullet. And the rest of the sequence is a chase action sequence of fighting and running from the Nazis.

What the film blatantly ignores is that this isn’t a case of stealing from the rich and giving to the poor. It’s stealing from the poor to give to the starving. These guys aren’t brave enough to jack Nazi shipments. They’re mugging poor, occupied farmers who are only still alive because they AREN’T Jewish. And they’re useful. Zwick didn’t think to include the scene in which an angry Nazi puts a gun to the Farmer’s head and dispatches his men to go to the farmer’s home and hang his family from the rafters, forcing the farmer to offer them the one thing they craved more than his milk. Jewish blood. He failed to write the line of dialog saying “We don’t want a map, show us where the Jews are.” And he sure as hell didn’t want us to feel one lick of sympathy as an angry Jew put a bullet through him for bringing the Nazis to their doorstep. Because that’s not the story he wanted to tell.

The problem ISN’T that he refuses to demonize these people in any way. Don’t for a minute think that’s the issue here. The problem is that Zwick keeps presenting us with very complicated, dark situations that he always seems to white wash in the favor of our characters. They’re not allowed to be dark and conflicted, even when there are hints that they might be. Married men take “Forest Wives” and it is treated more as a comedic angle rather than one that is both sad and all too human. They keep hinting that Tuvia might be having his way with various women at the camp, but it is never addressed, only mentioned in passing – and always in confusing manners. In one of the most human moments of the film, Jamie Bell’s Asael is confronted by the teenage girl he’s been pining for only to have her beg and plead for him to go and save her parents from a ghetto. “Please,” she begs “I’ve seen the way you look at me. I’ll do anything you want me to. Anything.” But he turns her down cold. “No. I can’t.” Guess what the next scene is.

Do you think we revisit that relationship to see if this girl really is in love with him or simply gives him the pretty wedding in the snowfall out of necessity? No. The movie simply moves on. The film is riddled with half presented relationships like this and not a single one of them gets the time or care they need to be fully explored.

Because when all is said and done, Zwick wanted to make MOSES: THIS TIME IT’S PERSONAL. It’s a half assed action film told with the Moses story framework. Ultimately the film isn’t half as gritty, pretty or epic as ANY of Zwick’s previous films – even his weaker ones. In fact it has a distinctly made for television feel with what looks to be budgetary constraints every time an action sequence gears up. Just wait until the epic final battle against three planes, 20 Nazis and a tank. It is at times goofy, deliberately pandering to the audience and noticeably uneven – and at all times lacking the emotional punch to tell a story as rich, evocative and dark as what these people really endured.

Like one of the survival techniques used in the film, it feels like Zwick watered down Verhoeven’s Black Book again and again until it was a thin broth that could feed everyone poorly rather than providing the proper nutrition to the smaller, but more distinctly ravenous audience. That this film has garnered any ‘best of’ praise this year astounds me. There are a number of incredible Holocaust films out there, a couple from this year even, but this is far from being one of them.

Until next time friends, smoke ‘em if ya got ‘em.

Massawyrm

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