Very interesting film about fascinating, little known story

Rating: 8/10 (8 August 2009)

A very interesting film about the real life story of the Bielski brothers, who after barely escaping the massacre of their family by the Germans in Belorussia during World War II, moved to the nearby forest and formed a Jewish militia. Soon many more refugees join in (including women, children and elderly people) and the group reached the low thousands. With some aid from the Soviets, they successfully survived the war and even fought back in a number of occasions the German attacks (though apparently they did not engage in combat in real life as much as it appears in the film, very wisely, given the disproportion of forces between the two sides). Daniel Craig is a perfect in the role of Tuvia Bielski, who as the elder of the brothers was the commander of the militias. Much of the humor in the movie is the contrast between the tough guy nature of the two elder Bielski brothers and the far more intellectual demeanor of the rest of the group, most of them urban professional types who for the first time in their life have to learn how to survive in the forest. Though the film is somewhat conventional in its narrative, it is nevertheless both fascinating and beguiling. The beautiful, haunting forest where they hid is another attraction to the movie (the film was shot in Lithuania, next door to Belorussia where the action took place). It is somewhat surprising this story was never brought to the screen in sixty something years (this probably have to do with the low profile that the Bielski brothers choose for themselves after the war as well as for the fact that their alliance with the Red Army made their saga somewhat politically uncomfortable during the Cold War).