{"id":804,"date":"2008-06-20T17:04:00","date_gmt":"2008-06-20T17:04:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/filmchat\/2008\/06\/defiance-heroes-murderers-both\/"},"modified":"2008-06-20T17:04:00","modified_gmt":"2008-06-20T17:04:00","slug":"defiance-heroes-murderers-both","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/filmchat\/2008\/06\/defiance-heroes-murderers-both.html","title":{"rendered":"Defiance — heroes? murderers? both?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\"\"<\/a>
Remember that scene<\/a> in Judd Apatow\u2019s Knocked Up<\/a><\/i> (2007) where Seth Rogen somewhat counter-intuitively sings the praises of Steven Spielberg\u2019s Munich<\/a><\/i> (2005) because it depicts tough Jewish protagonists who kill other people instead of being killed themselves? I say \u201ccounter-intuitively\u201d because, of course, Spielberg\u2019s film wasn\u2019t exactly celebrating all the killing and it was, indeed, wracked with angst and guilt over the propriety of it all.<\/span><\/p>\n

Last month, that scene, plus the then-impending release of Adam Sandler\u2019s You Don\u2019t Mess with the Zohan<\/a><\/i>, prompted The Screengrab to post a list of \u2018The Top 12 Tough Jews in Cinema<\/a>\u2018, and some people have been looking forward to the release of Edward Zwick\u2019s Defiance<\/a><\/i> later this year because it will give us more of the same, in the form of a Jewish resistance leader who fights back against the Nazis during World War II and is played in the film by Daniel Craig.<\/p>\n

As it happens, Craig played one of the more cold-blooded Israeli killers in Munich<\/i> \u2014 and to make things even more complicated, some critics noted that his character, who is blond-haired and blue-eyed, exudes a Nazi-like racism when he says things like, \u201cThe only blood I care about is Jewish blood\u201d \u2014 and now, reports Variety<\/a><\/i>, people are beginning to protest that the character he plays in Defiance<\/i> had something of a dark side too:<\/p>\n

Protests are mounting in Poland against Daniel Craig starrer \u201cDefiance,\u201d directed by Edward Zwick, which locals say wrongly portrays three real-life brothers living in the Nazi-occupied country as wartime heroes.<\/p>\n

The movie tells the story of the Jewish Bielski brothers<\/a> who escape into the Belarusian forest where they join Russian resistance fighters and build a village to protect themselves, eventually saving the lives of more than 1,200 Jews.<\/p>\n

Craig plays the oldest brother and leader of the forest rebels, Tewje Bielski.<\/p>\n

But Poles say that the Bielskis were murderers and have started a campaign to tell the truth about the supposed \u201cheroes.\u201d . . .<\/p>\n

Poland\u2019s Institute of National Remembrance<\/a>, which has been probing the subject since 2001, has collected documentation confirming that the forest resistance launched brutal attacks on neighboring Polish villages during World War II and joined Russian partisans in other raids.<\/p>\n

It includes a massacre of 128 people in the village of Naliboki in the Nowogrodzkie region of Belarus, then northeast Poland.<\/p>\n

Polish historian Jerzy Robert Nowak said: \u201cWe Poles are furious. It is a scandal that anyone could think of making a film casting the murderers who massacred Polish villagers as heroes. They were not heroes, they were murderers and bandits.\u201d . . .<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I know absolutely nothing about the history behind this story, except for what Wikipedia tells me of course, so I cannot comment on the veracity of these charges. By the same token, I doubt the protestors have actually seen<\/i> the film yet \u2014 I don\u2019t believe it comes out anywhere until December \u2014 so it may be a bit too early to complain that it does or doesn\u2019t address this aspect of the story. At any rate, I wouldn\u2019t write it off as full-blown hagiography just yet.<\/p>\n

I do find myself wondering how older, even biblical examples of Jews fighting back against oppression would be handled in today\u2019s more complicated artistic and political climate. Israeli director Amos Gitai\u2019s Esther<\/a><\/i> (1986; my comments<\/a>) has already drawn attention to an often-overlooked passage<\/a> of that book, which talks about how the Jews living in the Persian Empire killed hundreds of people and \u201cdid what they pleased to those who hated them.\u201d And I wonder what a filmmaker might do with the Maccabees<\/a>, some of whom are regarded not only as Jewish heroes but as Christian saints as well \u2014 so I use the term \u201chagiography\u201d above advisedly.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Remember that scene in Judd Apatow\u2019s Knocked Up (2007) where Seth Rogen somewhat counter-intuitively sings the praises of Steven Spielberg\u2019s Munich (2005) because it depicts tough Jewish protagonists who kill other people instead of being killed themselves? I say \u201ccounter-intuitively\u201d because, of course, Spielberg\u2019s film wasn\u2019t exactly celebrating all the killing and it was, indeed, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1116,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-804","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nDefiance -- heroes? murderers? both?<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Remember that scene in Judd Apatow's Knocked Up (2007) where Seth Rogen somewhat counter-intuitively sings the praises of Steven Spielberg's Munich (2005)\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/filmchat\/2008\/06\/defiance-heroes-murderers-both.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Defiance -- heroes? murderers? both?\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Remember that scene in Judd Apatow's Knocked Up (2007) where Seth Rogen somewhat counter-intuitively sings the praises of Steven Spielberg's Munich (2005)\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/filmchat\/2008\/06\/defiance-heroes-murderers-both.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"FilmChat\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2008-06-20T17:04:00+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"http:\/\/3.bp.blogspot.com\/_MwnH1kpbPRM\/SFxLQeXXEnI\/AAAAAAAABqk\/FtPuY9tDcVA\/s400\/defiance.jpg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Peter T. 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