Blu-ray Review: Defiance (2009)

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You know you have a major problem at the screenwriting stage when you realize that even some of the most renowned film critics around the globe can't even get the facts straight on just how many Bielski brothers there were in the film Defiance.

In most reviews, it's stated that there are three and while primarily the film centers on the trio played by Daniel Craig as the oldest brother Tuvia, Liev Schreiber (who gives the film's greatest performance as Zus) and the sweet, angelic faced Jamie Bell as Asael-- indeed if you pay close enough attention you'll ascertain that there's a fourth brother via the little seen youngest named Aron (played by George MacKay which I just confirmed on IMDb).



The fact that we don't know this right off the bat would normally be a cause for concern in any movie but it's far more detrimental in the case of Edward Zwick's well-intentioned Defiance which chronicles the incredibly inspiring and shockingly untold true story of the Bielski created Jewish refuge village in the Belorussian forests where they helped save the lives of over a thousand Jews from Nazi oppressors during World War II.



Moreover, further cause for alarm surrounds the development of the characters about whom I realized about midway through the film I knew very little if anything about. Luckily for Zwick, the commanding presences of the actors who embody the roles are so convincing (speaking largely in a foreign language throughout!) that they shield the overwhelmingly flawed cliches of an inarticulate screenplay.

Of course I'm over-simplifying a bit regarding the absence of character information but it's extremely sparse although on the most basic level, each one is given a goal or an actorly like "motivation." In the case of these three, they are defined as follows in the most one-dimensional manner as we come to terms with the most nobly heroic brother Tuvia whose patience and willingness to rule with force helped run the refuge village given his refusal to turn away any Jews when food and supplies were scarce.

Likewise, we're presented with Zus's decision for "fight" over flight and join up with the equally anti-semitic Russian soldiers to go kill the Nazis who gunned down his family, and Asael's struggle to remain loyal to both and that's pretty much the size of it for the film's running time.

However, it was only in the must see mini behind-the-scenes featurette that interviewed the living descendants of the Bielski family that I was able to learn (slightly) more about them and it's extremely disappointing since their story is so important and deserved a much better cinematic treatment in the work based on Nechama Tec's book Defiance: The Bielski Partisans.



With a bloated one hundred and thirty six minute running time and otherwise talented Blood Diamond, Glory, and Legends of the Fall director Edward Zwick's tendency to fill his film with too many group dynamic disagreements, a few ineffective love stories (despite the fact that Tuvia's was rooted in truth, Craig is given dialogue even weaker than that from Quantum of Solace), additionally we see way too much brotherly bickering for us to genuinely invested in any storyline since the characters are so thinly drawn.

Missing the more naturalistic and simply emotional grit of Herzog's Vietnam era film about survival against all odds-- Rescue Dawn-- or a better sense of just who we're watching as in other tales from unique World War II Jewish perspectives evidenced in Nowhere in Africa and The Counterfeiters, ultimately Defiance is a work that holds you at arm's length. And it further alienates with manipulative attempts at shocking us into empathy when for a World War II picture it would've normally been there right from the start.

Despite great turns by the lead actors-- especially Liev Schreiber who I kept thinking should've taken a pass at the screenplay given his wonderful adaptation of Everything is Illuminated-- and tremendous production values including that Oscar and Golden Globe nominated score, overall it's a film that's worth seeing just to get the bare minimum background on the Bielski effort but one that in the end is a major let-down.

Furthermore some of the film's recurring arguments of the strong surviving and not the weak as all must contribute and intellectuals are ill-equipped for survival received an intriguing and thought-provoking charge by A.O. Scott in The New York Times of unintentional anti-semitism. As he writes "in setting out to overturn historical stereotypes of Jewish passivity...[the film] ends up affirming them," since he continued that "what the Bielskis did is treated not as the extraordinary, odds-defying feat it was, but rather as an ideal that those who did not survive failed to live up to."



Therefore Scott asserts, it "celebrates strong men (who in real life sought no such glory) at the expense of those whose weakness-- whose inability to fight back, or to stay alive--was not a moral failure but a fact of history," and shouldn't have been presented to the contrary of "making the timidity of the Jews, rather than the barbarity of the Nazis and the vicious opportunism of their allies, a principle cause of the Shoah."



Although admittedly, I didn't leap to these conclusions myself, nonetheless I did notice some discomfort in the treatment of certain characters as well as Zwick's strange vague discussion of "forest wives" by inserting the idea in the script that women "knew what they were there for" but at the same time were forbidden to have a child. Obviously this in itself raised many contradictions and even more questions as to just what exactly the truth was, thus in the end, with so many loose ends involved that many of us still just don't know what to think, it truly reaffirms the major problems in the script and execution.



Aside from that, the Blu-ray technical aspects are excellent with stellar picture definition with a sharp contrast from left to right, other than the necessity to crank up the volume to hear some of the mumbled dialogue. And much to their credit, Paramount admirably fills the disc with high-definition special features as well including the aforementioned mini-documentary that interviews the actual relatives, a Blu-ray only extra on the film's score (featuring Joshua Bell), filmmaker commentary, a making-of featurette and more.

Purposely shot with a lack of heightened color, in the end you could probably get by with a DVD of the film. Yet, I'd definitely suggest previewing it in rental form before making a purchase since ultimately, I ended up both with once again great awe at the talent of Schreiber but also wishing I'd read the book or waited for the documentary that a Bielski relative is currently working on.



Although if the documentary is released, it probably won't benefit from the same marketing campaign or (futile) award season push but at the very least, we'll know-- not just the number of the Bielski brothers-- but fortunately more than just one or two vague descriptions about them as well which helps celebrate them as human beings rather than cardboard heroes.

The Wedding Weekend

Alternate Title: Shut Up and Sing

Director: Bruce Leddy

Even though I’m consistently inspired by the sheer poetry penned by my favorite movie critics (you guys know who you are!), recently I’ve become dismayed by a disappointing trend as-- those chosen geniuses aside-- a shockingly large amount of film criticism has become increasingly repetitive. This was especially apparent with last week’s most frequently obvious tagline of “What Happens in Vegas should have stayed in Vegas,” and will no doubt occur again when enough reviewers take in writer/director Bruce Leddy’s unbelievably clichéd male bonding film The Wedding Weekend. To explain: a simple film criticism scavenger hunt for similar phrases in other reviews will probably reach the double digits in less than twenty minutes when one considers not only Leddy’s film’s original title (see above) but also the fact that his inauthentic main characters routinely greet each other not with the “Wuzzzzuup” of beer commercials but with the phrase “Shut Up.” You can imagine the variations favored by reviewers across the country all still reeling from a lackluster film venting their frustration via their keyboards, looking for the best way to work in the phrase "Shut Up"-- cherishing the fact that instead of being given a time-out for saying it in school, they’re earning a guaranteed laugh. And indeed, it’s hard when a joke is that obvious, repetitive, fitting and readily available to will oneself to dig deeper; in fact I found myself leaving the theatre with the lyrics of the infectious hit “Shut Up & Let Me Go” by The Ting Tings (aka the song from the latest iPod commercial which you can download below) playing in my head and wishing I’d listened to that on repeat for ninety minutes instead of taking in the flick. While we can’t always force inspiration, especially when critiquing an ode to mediocrity, I thought I’d fight the urge to shout “Shut Up” and-- taking a cue from the man who inspired me to write about film, Roger Ebert—segue into the review with an anecdote.

A few years ago, I foolishly gave into well-intentioned peer pressure in consenting to a blind date. After the predictably inauspicious beginning best characterized as “Hugh Grant styled bumbling,” the conversation flowed a bit more freely when we started discussing film (I know, big surprise!). And in switching gears to other topics, delightedly we discovered a few other things in common-- however, instead of driving forward, our burgeoning relationship stalled unbelievably with my date’s admission that his greatest passion in life was a cappella music. Out of equal parts Midwestern politeness and downright curiosity, I tried to feign enthusiasm but no doubt an eyebrow was raised when he shared his experiences performing as part of a larger ensemble in college and the high he felt singing with other men. I’m sure you’re with me in wondering whether or not—ahem-- I was exactly his type but he was a sweet kid so I tried to show interest until a few firework-less dates later, I found a way to insert what I call my “old reliable” (aka the traditional “friends” speech).

Perhaps like carnivals or clowns, republicans or scientologists, renaissance festivals or Star Trek conventions, there’s just something odd about a cappella. And it’s all the stranger in The Wedding Weekend when we’re introduced to the pastime without even a trace of justifiable explanation by writer/director Bruce Leddy who seems so convinced that the entire world shares his love of a cappella that he repeatedly creates more opportunities for his gorgeous sounding but awkward group to perform, even going as far as to find the lead characters land in the slammer alongside an intimidating man who-- wouldn’t you know-- melts like butter in discovering their like-mindedness as they sow their oats in a rousing musical number. It’s this complete absence of irony or an even tongue-in-cheek acknowledgement of the ridiculousness of Leddy’s situations that brings out the cynic in audience members, especially even those, like me, who normally love the sound of human beings singing in harmony.

Reuniting for a wedding fifteen years after they shared the “youthful bliss of ignorance” performing in a collegiate a capella group, it seems not much has changed for the seven member male chorus. While Steven (David Alan Basche) has moved to California to launch a reality television show starring Vanna White and takes prodding to return to the Hamptons to celebrate the nuptials of Greg (yummy Mark Feuerstein) with whom he’d fallen out with over a “stolen” girlfriend, the main five continually delight in every opportunity to sing together on a New York street corner during their lunch hours. Although still preoccupied with sex and how to get it, the men seem eager to get a jumpstart on each of their mid-life crises, alienating the women in their lives, with David (David Harbour) who, after changing the subject from having children with enough baseball analogies to annoy a television commentator, instead fixates on measuring his receipting hairline (oh yeah--good times!). While it’s obvious that Leddy intended most of the laughs to derive from the hammy performance of Reg Rogers, who seems to be doing a cross between a Neil Simon era Jack Lemmon impression and standard musical comedy dinner theatre, playing a cynical recently divorced lawyer going on his five hundredth day of disappointing celibacy, Saturday Night Live alumni Molly Shannon steals every scene she’s in as the unhappy, lust-filled potty mouthed wife of workaholic Ted (Alexander Chaplin). Although relegated to mostly window dressing or being directed to look on in disappointment or with rolled eyes at the men whose ultimate catchphrase is “Shut Up,” the women seem to be the only relatable ones in the film, even when we’re served up a few more clichés such as a Martha Stewart like Hollywood wife and a twenty-three year old Swedish nanny named Elsa (Camilla Thorsson) whom the guys hope may offer Richard a "pity jump."

Inexplicably, The Wedding Weekend earned five film festival accolades including an Audience Award from the U.S. Comedy Arts Festival, which makes one wonder just what the other screenings were like. However, for audiences given a larger range of options, there’s no need to pretend you’re on a blind date and feign politeness in the multiplex; Leddy’s overly theatrical staged offering would have been better suited for a musical theatre production where not only the scenery chewing actors would have felt more at home but the a cappella wouldn’t have seemed so out of place. For a thematically similar yet infinitely better male bonding movie, hit your local video store to check out the Film Intuition favorite Beautiful Girls or download the song below from iTunes for the best recent recitation of “Shut Up" not found in countless movie reviews.

"Shut Up & Let Me Go" by The Ting Tings