Review: ‘Defiance’ on DVD
We here at ComicMix write about heroes all the time. They tend to be muscle-bound, wear spandex and appear in the fevered imaginations of writers and artists. In the real world, people are given the title hero when they are bystanders, victims, or their feats are fairly ordinary. As a result, the term has been somewhat watered down and in need of rehabilitation.
The process could have begun last winter when two movies about World War II were released, featuring very different kinds of heroes. Neither Valkyrie nor Defiance
[[[Defiance]]] visited a different side of the war, that of the victims, the Jews who rose above their adversity and defied by Nazis by surviving, led by three amazing brothers. Bother films suffered because by the time they were made and released, the country’s mood was too dour to pay attention to serious dramas or care about dated acts of heroism.
Today, though, Defiance comes out on disc and worth a look. Again, an incredible story from the war has been uncovered and brought to the screen. Edward Zwick first began writing this story in 1999, based on Nechama Tec’s [[[Defiance: The Bielski Partisans]]], and finally managed to shoot the story in 2007, starring Daniel Craig, Liev Schreiber, and Jamie Bell as the brothers Bielski. They were your lower class workers in Belarus when the Germans began killing the Jews. To survive, they fled into the forest where they played as boys. Fairly quickly, the scattered refugees in the forest coalesced around these three, who took on the responsibility of caring for them, and more importantly, organizing them to survive the impending winter.
While the film focused entirely on that first formative year, it should be noted they survived in the forest for three years, with over 1200 walking to freedom when the war ended. The brothers had their differences, with Tuvia (Craig) and Zus (Schreiber) arguing over what to do and Zus eventually leaving to serve with the Russians for a time. But we see how these “street smart” people came to lead a motley crew of intellectuals, peasants, upper class, and just plain folk who needed guidance. We watched as news reached them of now-dead loved ones, including Tuvia and Zus’ wives. In time, people took Forest Wives and Husbands, seeking comfort where they could.
Zwick is no stranger to historical tales ([[[Glory]]]), and brings the same attention to detail and character here. Not only do the brothers evolve over the course of the story, but we watch all the bit players adapt, change, and grow; filling the screen with a sense of life that Bryan Singer’s Valkyrie was devoid of. The movie is not entirely faithful to history as combat sequences including the climax were added for “Hollywood” concerns but their struggles, especially the harsh winter, ring true.
The film is backed by several special features. The 30 minute Making Of shows the attention to the little things extended to the weapons, costumes, and makeup – all well displayed. Zwick took portraits of some of those who survived and we’re treated to a nice black and white gallery. Children of the Otriad: The Families Speak, though, is the highlight, as the children and grandchildren of the Bielskis talk of their fathers and what they were like after the war. Whereas Asael (Bell) died soon after these events, the two remaining brothers survived and worked side-by-side in the trucking industry here in America for 30 years. We see them as older men in bar mitzvah footage, and it’s hard to see these elders as war heroes but there they were and while Zus still had a spark of life, Tuvia carried a gravity about him. Lilka (Alexa Davalos), the woman who came to marry Tuvia after meeting in the forest, never seems happy in the footage. Her children spoke of her inability to fully enjoy anything, another price exacted by World War II.
For over four decades, PAT COOPER has made audiences laugh, but when it comes to the state of comedy today, Pat isn’t amused. His no-holds-barred opinion on today’s comics is red hot plus DOCTOR WHO gets a companion at last and something BIG is going on with CAPTAIN AMERICA #600!
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One of the really interesting aspects about the growth in graphic novels is that more and more people are using the form for memoirs and autobiographical works. Will Eisner explored growing up in the tenements, kicking things off, and since then we have had utterly fascinating works that detail romance, aging, life on the streets and the like.
hit my desk, I knew nothing about Brown. As a result, the book, now available from Touchstone Books, was a window into a new world and one I was pleased to visit. Brown’s growth from doodler to artist no doubt mirrors the journey many working artists took, but watching him lurch from school to work to art was interesting, since they all wound up informing his work.
As with any convention, a lot of fast, disjointed thoughts kicking around. In no particular order:
Over at the Image booth, Frank Cho and Chris Giarusso moved a lot of copies of their books as well.
America had won World War II, becoming the first true Super Power of the 20th Century. But with it came a price and that was a desperate desire among the populace to preserve their freedom through an amazing sense of conformity. Being different was seen as being un-American and you were likely to be accused of being a Communist, which had replaced being a Nazi as the vilest kind of person.
that was the first work of fiction to examine the cost this conformity exact from the soul of the individual and society as a while. The acclaimed work had resisted being adapted into film until Kate Winslet campaigned for nearly four years to get the film made by her husband, director Sam Mendes.
World War II seems to have generated countless stories about heroism and bravery, stories told for the point of view of the allies and the axis, stories told about life on the homefront and life in the foxhole. As a result, it remains an enduring source of fodder for filmmakers as more and more details come to the surface. Through the 1950s and 1960s, most of the WW II movies were highly fictionalized accounts and by the 1970s war stories were played out, fewer and further between. In the last decade, we’ve had history to sift through and we now know of [[[Schindler’s List]]]. 
, Bryan Singer’s entry into the pantheon, intended to tell us of the closest a plot to assassinate Hitler came to working. Presuming you were taught anything about the war in school, you might not even know there were over a dozen attempts to kill the Chancellor of the German Republic.
