With or against?

Rating: 7/10 (15 April 2019)

"Defiance" is based on the true story of a group of Jews in Belarus who successfully defied the Nazis. They hid in the forest and maintained a self-contained society while losing only about 50 of their some 1,200 members. The "Bielski Partisans" represented the war's largest and most successful group of Jewish resisters. A fact about the setting is when filmmakers arrived on the actual locations to film the story, they found no local memory of their activities, and, for many reasons, hardly any Jews. Edward Zwick's film shows how they survived, governed themselves, and defied the Nazis. This movie is a deep emotional experience, but I found myself a little detached. The best performance is by Liev Schreiber. His Zus Bielski is more concerned with the big picture, more ideological, more driven by tactics. Daniel Craig is very effective as Tuvia, the group leader, but his character, is concerned primarily with the organization, discipline and planning of the group. Their efforts prevailed, and today there are thousands who would not have been born if they had not succeeded.