Jakob the Liar
Tags: murder

Plot synopsis:
In Poland of early 1944, a Polish-Jewish shopkeeper named Jakob Heym is summoned to the German headquarters after being falsely accused of being out after curfew. While waiting for the commander, Jakob overhears a German radio broadcast speaking about Soviet offensives. Returned to the ghetto, Jakob shares his information with a friend, sparking rumors that there is a secret radio within the ghetto. After hesitating, Jakob decides to use the chance to spread hope throughout the ghetto by continuing to tell the optimistic, fantastic tales that he allegedly heard from his "secret radio" and his lies keep hope and humor alive among the isolated ghetto inhabitants. He also has a real secret in that he is hiding a young Jewish girl who escaped from an extermination camp deportation train.
However, the Gestapo learn of the mythical radio and begin a search for the resistance hero who dares operate it. Jakob surrenders himself to the Germans as they demand the person with the radio give himself up or risk hostages being killed. During interrogation, Jakob tells the police commander that he had only listened to the radio inside his office. He is ordered to announce publicly that this was all a lie, so the ghetto's liquidation would then proceed in an orderly fashion. When presented to the public, Jakob refuses to tell the truth, but is shot before he can make his own speech.
At the film's ending, Jakob says, post-mortem, that all the ghetto's residents were then deported and were never seen again. As in the novel, there is an alternate "but maybe it wasn't like that at all" ending where, following Jakob's death, the train carrying the Jewish prisoners to the death camps is halted by Soviet troops and the occupants released.

Review: There were parts that didn't work for me, especially pieces where narration would have worked better than a character monologue (Jakob is a narrator as well as a character, so why does he talk to himself instead of us so much?) But on the whole, it was a good story, well performed by those involved.The ending, which I shall refrain from describing for the benefit of any who have not seen it, is absolutely fitting.
So I wasn't sure what to expect in "Jakob the Liar." What I found was a surprisingly good performance in a wonderful movie.Williams plays Jakob Heym, confined to the Jewish Ghetto of Warsaw by the Nazis during the Second World War. With hope fading, Heym accidentally discovers that Russian troops aren't far away, and begins to spread the news.
Others become convinced that he has a radio hidden, and Heym's fictional "news reports" from the BBC provide enough hope to keep the residents of the Ghetto going through this dark time.Williams (also executive producer) did a fine job as Heym.
The rest of the cast (primarily Hannah Taylor-Gordon as Lina and Liev Schreiber as Mischa) are good, but overshadowed by Williams.The character of Kirschbaum (played by Armin Mueller-Stahl) filled me with sadness and represents a clear statement of the evils of Nazism.
He plays Jakob, a Jewish shopkeeper in a Nazi ghetto who tells a friend that he has a radio in order to prevent that friend from committing suicide.Things do not appear to be going well within the ghetto, the war seems like it will never end, and morale among the imprisoned Jews is steadily waning, resulting in suicides left and right.
His skeptical friend doubts him, so Jakob quickly tells him that he has a radio so that he will believe the Russians will be there to save them all soon, and his friend's suicide is prevented.By the next morning, literally everyone in the ghetto knows that Jakob Heym has a radio, and so he is venerated like a God and constantly hounded about what the newest news is, and thus enters the main conflict of the movie.
It's a conflict that you sit there knowing what needs to happen for a happy ending and so you sit there and hope for that, because every option has terrible consequences.Jakob, first and foremost, is absolutely terrified that word will reach the Nazis who will execute him if they discover he has a radio (whether he really has it or not), yet at the same time he can't let it get out within the ghetto that he DOESN'T have a radio, because since the whole rumor began the rampant suicides have completely ceased.
What he has to do, then, is walk the fine line between delivering lots of fictitious good news to the whole ghetto without letting the Nazis find out about it.There is definitely something that needs to be said about the importance of a movie like this.
The Nazis killed funny people, too.I read a review on the title page for Jakob the Liar here on the IMDb, where a reviewer who completely missed the boat on this movie criticized it for things like the comedic content, the behavior and presentation of the Jews of the ghetto, and the choice of Robin Williams for the role of Jakob Heym.
The way I see it, as long as a movie takes the holocaust seriously then it should not be criticized for being a holocaust film that's not in the right format or that had an actor who has done too many comedy roles.
This same reviewer, by the way, praised Life Is Beautiful, a spectacular film, as is Jakob the Liar.I can certainly understand that there are people who are touchy about the holocaust.
It presents a story of a ghetto full of captive Jews who have had their lives stolen from them and are desperate for some hope, and one man tries to help and inadvertently finds himself in a position to provide massive amounts of hope to them, but at massive risk to his own safety.So if you don't like to see Robin Williams playing serious, dramatic roles (roles at which he is increasingly displaying his massive talent ), don't watch the movie!
Maybe a myth that mothers started telling their kids to make them scared of Germans or some other such nonsense.Jakob the Liar has no illusions, it takes a tragedy in human history and tells a story of a man who did what he could to help those suffering around him, and Robin Williams should obviously be commended for the power of his performance, as should the rest of the cast.
The film wanted to be Roberto Benigni and Life is Beautiful but never seemed to have the courage to go there, even with Robin Williams in the lead, until the last few scenes of the movie.
Having said that, Jakob the Liar is fiendishly good, creatively done, and Robin Williams does a fine job, even when Hannah Taylor-Gordon, who plays Lina, wasn't stealing every scene she was in.
I can understand why some viewers take offense at any film which might seem to trivialize the Holocaust, but I found Life is Beautiful not disrespectful but deeply moving, and consider this particular tale to be a captivating depiction of one individual's unique attempt to keep hope alive in a desperate situation.The story revolves around a lonely Polish shopkeeper & widower, Jakob, who is confined to a Jewish ghetto in 1944.
The Germans hear reports of this forbidden radio and are seeking out the resistance operator of it.Robin Williams dominates this movie and is brilliant as usual in the endearing, sympathetic role of the kind Jakob who must try to balance getting out lots of hopeful (if fictitious) war reports to keep spirits up while at the same time avoid Nazi suspicion and detection.The movie portrays the despair of the ghetto's inhabitants and the grave injustice of their captive state.
The movie begins with Jakob (played by Robin Williams in one of his surprisingly many serious roles) narrating a joke to the audience.
"But Hawkeye, why should I care about pretty good acting in a movie about the Holocaust when I can just go watch Schindler's List?" Well, eager reader, I'm actually glad you brought that film up.
Insteadwell, I don't want to spoil anything, but here are Robin William's words basically spelling out the reality of trying to live each day as a Jew during the Holocaust: "So that's how it ended.
Well in my 9th grade history class in school we are learning about WW2 and so we watched Jakob the Liar and I think it was great, Robin Williams does good in the movie.
Jakob the Liar is an underrated movie.I just want to say that before anything else in my review.The movie tells about Jakob Heym, excellently played by Robin Williams.Jakob is a Jewish shop keeper living in Polish ghetto in 1944.He overhears a German radio broadcast about Russian troop movements.When he shares the information with a friend a rumor about a secret radio starts spreading in the ghetto.Jakob starts making up stories to the ghetto inhabitants he has heard from his 'secret radio'.This way he brings hope to the people who are losing it.Peter Kassovitz' Jakob the Liar (1999) hasn't got as much credit it would have deserved.It's a movie about an important matter.It combines comedy and tragedy in a great way.It has a brilliant cast.Robin Williams is just amazing.This actor, who turns 55 today (congratulations) has a great ability to act both comic and dramatic roles.He is a great man and a great actor.The young Hannah Taylor- Gordon is excellent playing Lina Kronstein, the Jewish girl Jakob is hiding.She was amazing also playing Anne Frank a couple years later.I hope we'll be hearing a lot from her in the future.Then there are also these greats; Bob Balaban (Kowalsky), Alan Arkin (Max Frankfurter), Michael Jeter (Avron), Liev Schreiber (Mischa the Prizefighter), director's son Mathieu Kassovitz (Herchel) and lots of others.This is a movie that can make you laugh and it is a movie that can make you cry.It shows all these poor people living under the horrors of war, under the circumstances you can not justify.
I'm a huge fan of Robin Williams but even he couldn't make this enjoyable for me, I didn't find Jakob to be a likable character and didn't care for him, as for the rest of the cast, there was a complete lack of chemistry and none of them put enough effort in to their performances.
The wayward Jewish accents are almost cartoonish in their over-exaggeration, and casting Williams as Jakob was a gambit that just doesn't work (his performance plays like a medley of the actor's other serious turns on film).
To be brief the producers of Jakob The Liar don't deserve from the users of Internet Movie Database a "6.0 average".The humor in the screenplay became unforgettable by the perfect role-playing of an actor (Robin Williams) who created the main characters of every movie that he acts a milestone...
Jakob is a role he carries off with impressive realism, and which significantly deepened my respect for the man's acting talent.As a Jew in a Polish ghetto under the Nazis, Robin Williams portrays a man hurting from the loss of wife, freedom and friends.
The excellent film-making further supports the atmosphere by almost making you feel you've stepped into a black-and-white era, walking the streets with Williams, watching death and depression eat away at the whole neighborhood.Things begin to change when Jakob, summoned by the commandant, overhears a radio bulletin.
In this film, Robin Williams plays a serious role as Jakob, a jewish resident in a war camp in nazi occupied Poland.
He notices how this news lifted the spirits of many of the jews so he continues to make up bogus reports and gives everyone the impression that he does in fact have a radio, which he does not.In the meantime, he is secretly taking care of a young girl in the camp and must try and keep the secret that he has no radio, from her as she is very much looking forward to getting out of the camp and seeing her parents again.I really liked this movie.
Jakob the Liar features a good straight-up performance by Robin Williams and a terrific supporting cast, but more than that it is a surprisingly complex film that reflects many of the classic traits of Yiddish humor.
In Yiddish humor, the shtetl, or classic village, as immortalized in the wonderful stories of Sholomon Aleichem (think Fiddler on the Roof and Tevya, which is a direct adaptation from Aleichem's tales) are full of set characters - and they are here - the Professor is like the Rebbe, Jakob is a schnorre (someone who loves to get things for free) who becomes the mensch (the upstanding man), and so on.Of all the films in the Holocaust corpus this is one of the few that reflects with fantasy and imagination and humor what suffering means in Jewish culture.
However it defies our norms of this style of film and as such, very correctly, challenges our notions and images of daily life outside the camps.All in all this rewards viewing at a deeper level than simply a man who invents a radio to give others hope - it is a real reflection of pre-war Judaic humor and as such is a very worthwhile attempt to preserve the deeper meaning of a Jewish understanding that humor is one of the better ways, and sometimes the only way, to cope when darkness falls..
Even those who don't actually like films related to wars, might like this one,robin Williams has done a good job, but others in the cast are at times even better.
Jakob, then carries on the lie,and later is forced to carry on the lie, that he has a radio, to keep the hope alive, in the end dies , but doesn;t let go , just so that people already close to death under the Nazis, don't lose whatever hope that is left.You keep getting the feeling , that it could have been better made, with more focus on the emotional drama happening due to the situation.
The story within the film I can agree with some that it's not new, but the remake with mr.Williams (Jakob Heym) I think is very good indeed.
Robin Williams was perfect in his role as Jakob, a latkah vendor, who pretends to have a radio and distribute good news to other Jews in the ghetto.
While this one doesn't come close (and it doesn't try), it is still an entertaining movie.Jakob Heym (Robin Williams) is a man living in one of the many Jewish ghettos of the time.
I gave this 8/10Well acted, great scenes, great sets, excellent supporting characters (especially Misha), very believable behaviors, everybody is starving, the Germans are brutally bad people (mostly) and Robin Williams is wonderful.But there's something wrong somewhere, and I can't put my finger on it.
Life is beautiful was a masterfully gifted story of hope and survival; Jakob the Liar promised so much but delivered so little.Williams' brief reprisal of his Good Morning Vietnam talent as a "radio announcer" was the only part that caught my interest and that was out of sheer nostalgia.
There is a lightness to the movie throughout, including the music but I wouldn't exactly call it a comedy, it has a few funny moments but the mood is generally dark, cold and hungry with Williams obviously toned down.This takes place in Nazi-occupied Poland during WW11 with Robin Williams as Jakob, a (former) café owner/pancake maker who accidentally overhears a forbidden German radio broadcast and then tries to boost the morale of his ghetto neighbors by inventing further fictitious news bulletins.
I enjoyed the overall story here and how the radio took on a life of its own with Jakob almost forced into telling tales as his reports had begun to generate hope and lessen the overwhelming depression and suicides that prevailed over the ghetto.
In "Jakob the Liar" Peter Kassovitz has directed Robin Williams and an impressive cast in a film that will invariably be compared to last year's `Life is Beautiful'.
Based on Frank Beyer's `Jakob der Lügner' (1974) from the novel by Jurek Becker, Peter Kassovitz' version, or remake if you must, had the bad luck to come out just a few months after Benigni's `La Vita è Bella' and thus was simply considered opportunist band-wagon riding, especially as it seemed to come into comparison with Spielberg's superb `Schindler's List', when in fact production and filming was well under way in Hungary and Czechoslovakia long before Benigni suddenly popped up like a rabbit in a top hat.Usually I would just pass over Robin Williams as I find most of his supposedly humourous attempts at playing rôles more than somewhat irritating; however perusing IMDb I got curioser and curioser.
It is a film that has everything, sadness, some lighter moments and history and like Robin Williams said people should be reminded the awful going ons of that time.
You don't feel the same way as if you were watching Schindler's List but because the movie is not that depressing, it actually shows hope and because of a misunderstanding, Robin Williams charater must do all he can to raise the moral of his friends and a little girl that lives with him.PLOT: A Jewish pancake maker (Robin Williams) lives in a Jewish ghetto during WWII.
Because of this he must keep the ghetto's moral up by making them believe that freedom is on the way.VIEWS: Robin Williams does give a good performance and you sympathize by what he does.
Instead of showing the whole picture, this movie show a small part of what it was like for the Jewish people during WWII.SCENES TO WATCH FOR: The arguing between Robin Williams and his barber friend..
It's timing couldn't be worse, only because this new film cannot hold a candle to Benigni's triumph.Robin Williams stars as Jakob, a lonely widower stuck in a Jewish Ghetto in 1945.
His pained dramatic look while trying to make the whole world happy is very admirable, but he needs to stop making these movies (Robin Williams and his wife produced this film for their Blue Wolf Productions, so it really is their fault).
At times it did feel a little laboured as it tried to get laughs or comedy out of a very serious situation, and some of the scenes between Jakob and the orphan girl did feel like Williams settling back into well worn material.What the problem was for me was that it didn't really grab me until near the end, for the moat part it was almost as if the film could have become background noise for me as it wasn't well delivered and was a little flat.
Robin Williams gave a good performance, as always, but the movie itself lacked the dramatic touch it needed.
Of course it's very timely that "Life is Beautiful" was released around the same time as "Jakob the Liar."  I just rented this film today, but I still have to say I was reminded of the much-better Benigni masterpiece.This movie gives us a theatrical look at the Holocaust.
"Jakob the Liar" is not a bad film, and is fairly watchable (though you might want to watch it in bits and pieces like I did), but you can't help but feel a lot more could've been done with the intriguing premise.
Robin Williams puts in a surprising performance in this heartfelt, touching, interessting, and beautiful movie about a group of Jewish people in a Nazi German ghetto.
"Jakob" (Robin Williams) is a Jew living in a Nazi-occupied Polish ghetto where the residents have lost all hope.
At any rate, rumors get started within the ghetto that Jakob (Robin Williams) has a forbidden radio.