Defiance (2008 film)
Defiance is a 2008 American war film directed by Edward Zwick, and starring Daniel Craig as Tuvia Bielski, Liev Schreiber as Zus Bielski, Jamie Bell as Asael Bielski, and George MacKay as Aron Bielski. Set during the occupation of Belarus by Nazi Germany, the film's screenplay by Clayton Frohman and Zwick was based on Nechama Tec's 1993 book Defiance: The Bielski Partisans, an account of the eponymous group led by Polish Jewish brothers who saved and recruited Jews in Belarus during World War II.
Defiance
- Clayton Frohman
- Edward Zwick
Defiance: The Bielski Partisans
by Nechama Tec
- Edward Zwick
- Pieter Jan Brugge
- Paramount Pictures (North America)
- Essential Entertainment (International)
- December 31, 2008
137 minutes[1]
United States
English
Russian
$32 million
$51.2 million
The film was released in select cinemas in the United States on December 31, 2008, followed by general release worldwide in January 2009.[2]
Plot[edit]
In August 1941, several weeks after Nazi Germany launched its invasion into USSR, Einsatzgruppen sweep behind the relentlessly advancing German forces across the occupied parts of western Soviet Union, systematically exterminating the Jewish population. Among the Jewish survivors not staying in German-enforced ghettoes are the Bielski brothers: Tuvia, Zus, Asael and Aron. Their parents are killed by local Schutzmannschaft under orders from the German occupiers. The brothers flee to the Naliboki forest, where they encounter other Jewish escapees hiding in the woods and take them under their protection. Tuvia kills the Schutzmannschaft chief responsible for his parents' deaths.
Over the next year, a growing number of Jewish refugees join the Bielskis. Their group raids local farms for food and supplies, stage raids on the Germans and their collaborators, and move their camp whenever they are discovered. Mounting casualties cause Tuvia, the oldest brother, to reconsider their approach in order to minimise the loss of Jewish lives, whilst his younger brother Zus is in favour of more militant and daring operations. As winter approaches, disagreement between the two eldest brothers comes to a head and Zus leaves the camp with several of his followers to join a local company of Soviet partisans, while Tuvia remains in charge of the Jewish camp. An arrangement is made between the two groups in which the Soviet partisans agree to protect the Jewish camp in exchange for supplies.
After a winter of sickness, starvation, growing discontent and attempted mutiny, the camp learns that the Germans are about to attack them in force at Easter. The Soviet partisans decide to retreat eastward, but Zus is unwilling to comply with the order of the partisan leader to follow their retreat. Tuvia's group prepares to evacuate the camp on Easter eve when Luftwaffe Stukas bomb them. A delaying force stays behind, led by Asael, to slow down the German infantry, but their defense does not last long, with only Asael and one other member surviving to rejoin the rest of the group, who are confronted at the edge of the forest with a seemingly impassable marsh. They cross the marsh with only one casualty but are immediately attacked by a German platoon supported by a Panzer III tank. Just as all seems lost, the Germans are assaulted from the rear by Zus and his force, who have deserted the Soviet partisans to rejoin the Jewish group.
The film's closing intertitles inform the viewer that the Bielski partisans lived in the forest for another two years and grew to a total of 1,200 Jews, building a hospital, a nursery and a school. Asael joined the Red Army and was killed in action six months later; Zus, Tuvia and Aron survived the war and emigrated to the United States to form a small trucking business in New York City. The epilogue also states that the Bielski brothers never sought recognition for what they did and that the descendants of the people they saved now number tens of thousands.
Production[edit]
Zwick began writing a script for Defiance in 1999 after acquiring film rights to Tec's book. He developed the project under the banner of his production company Bedford Falls Productions, and the project was financed by the London-based company Grosvenor Park Productions with a budget of $32 million.
Paramount Vantage acquired the rights to distribute Defiance in the United States and Canada.[3]
In May 2007, Daniel Craig was cast in the lead role. The following August, Schreiber, Bell, Davalos, and Arana were cast.[4] Production began in early September 2007 so that Craig could complete filming Defiance in time for reprising his role as James Bond in Quantum of Solace.[3]
Defiance was filmed in three months in Lithuania, just across the border from Belarus.[5][6] Co-producer Pieter Jan Brugge felt the shooting locations, between 150 and 200 kilometres from the actual sites, lent authenticity to the film; some local extras were descendants of the Jewish families rescued by the Bielski partisans.[7]
Reception[edit]
Box office[edit]
Defiance made $128,000 during its two weeks of limited release in New York City and Los Angeles. It made $10 million during its first weekend of wide release in the United States.
By the end of its box office run, the film made approximately $52 million worldwide.
Critical response[edit]
On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 59% of 189 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 5.9/10. The website's consensus reads: "Professionally made but artistically uninspired, Ed Zwick's story of Jews surviving WWII in the Belarus forest lacks the emotional punch of the actual history."[8]
Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 58 out of 100, based on 34 critics, indicating "mixed or average" reviews.[9]
Critic A. O. Scott of The New York Times called the film "stiff, musclebound". He said Zwick "wields his camera with a heavy hand, punctuating nearly every scene with emphatic nods, smiles or grimaces as the occasion requires. His pen is, if anything, blunter still, with dialogue that crashes down on the big themes like a blacksmith's hammer". Scott also said the film unfairly implied that "if only more of the Jews living in Nazi-occupied Europe had been as tough as the Bielskis, more would have survived".[10] The review adds that "in setting out to overturn historical stereotypes of Jewish passivity ...(the film) ends up affirming them."[10] Zwick responded: "It is a tribute to honor and luck, and to help other people escape it is an honor. But the fact that you don't escape it is not a negative verdict on your honor."[11]
The New Yorker critic David Denby praised the film, saying: "it makes instant emotional demands, and those who respond to it, as I did, are likely to go all the way and even come out of it feeling slightly stunned." Denby also praised the cast's performances, which he described as "a kind of realistic fairy tale set in a forest newly enchanted by the sanctified work of staying alive."[12]
Accolades[edit]
On January 22, 2009, the film received a nomination for an Academy Award in the category of Best Original Score for its soundtrack by James Newton Howard.
Defiance was also nominated for the Golden Globe Award for Best Original Score for 2008.[13]