How true is this "true story"?

Rating: 8/10 (3 October 2009)

As others have commented, "Defiance" is filled with clichés, but how many original moments can one expect in another movie about Jews who survived the Holocaust, in this case by hiding in a forest in Belarus, stealing food from nearby farms and killing Nazis in order to keep alive? The story of the Bielski brothers is said to be true, and I have no reason to doubt that it is. But the incidents shown? The individual details? The character of the four brothers? The personalities of the men and women whom the Bielskis saved? I have no idea. All I can say for sure is that this movie is effective and that it is well acted, especially by Daniel Craig as Tuvia, whose main interest is saving refugees, by Liev Schreiber as Zus, whose main interest is killing Germans, by Jamie Bell as the third and most sensitive of the brothers. Among the women, serious impressions are also made by Alexa Davalos as Tuvia's lover (and later his real life wife if the film's end notes are to be believed) and Iben Hjejle as Bella who marries the third brother (Jamie Bell's character) in the forest. According again to the end notes, a thousand of these refugees survived in the forest for nearly four years, and many of their descendants are alive today. The movie is inspiring and I could handle the clichés because clichés are often representations of reality, and the reality of the Holocaust produced millions of events that were not very different from one another. Different people died or survived, of course, but survival in the woods occurred in several places, and I'd guess the experiences of those who survived in those circumstances were more alike than different.