Refuse, Resist
It’s a true story out of World War II that most of us haven’t heard of, but that doesn’t make it any less remarkable. Defiance is about four Russian brothers who decide to stand up against the Nazis in the face of Jewish persecution in 1941. Daniel Craig is Tuvia Bielski, Schreiber is Zus, and two lesser known actors, Jamie Bell and George Mackay, star as the younger brothers Asael and Aron, respectively. After their home and much of their family are killed, the brothers flee to the forest, a place they know well from having eluded the police several times before during much more peaceful times. Now, they are hunted by the Nazis and by their own people who are forced by the Nazis to capture all Jewish Russian citizens. At first the brothers have only themselves to feed, but shortly into the film they come across other Russian Jews who are also suffering and running.
The brothers decide to help any Jew that comes to them. Tales of the brothers’ success in stealing food from local Russian farmers and disrupting Nazi operations become known to other Russians and Nazis alike. Eventually the population of the community that the brothers build grows, and there are many stresses that come of this: mouths to feed, a pregnant woman, the old and ailing, disease, and of course, the impending Russian winter. Can the brothers and their fellow Russians work together to survive or will they be captured and sent to concentration camps? Without knowing the story of the real Bielski brothers, I had no idea — but the film did a lot of things right to make the entire two and a quarter hour affair a gripping and interesting one.
Besides a competent script, the acting is excellent, by the stars (Craig and Schreiber) and from the half dozen or so supporting actors. Defiance is compromised of several well done action sequences, some romance, plenty of drama, and actually several nicely done tearjerker scenes. By others, this film has been described as inspirational, and I would have to agree with that–the conditions that these Russians persevered through is nothing short of incredible and the cast and crew of Defiance did a fine job in depicting just that.
Of course, one ‘catch’ with such powerful dramas is that they don’t offer a great deal of replay value, if that matters to you. I think everyone should strongly consider watching this film, but for most, a one time viewing is likely going to be enough.
Defiance On Blu-ray
Defiance on Blu-ray includes several HD features, TrueHD Surround Sound, and an excellent picture. As you would expect from such a recent film, the transfer to Blu-ray looks very impressive, although some scenes had a distinct bluish tint to them for some reason. Otherwise, image quality is crisp with excellent contrast and vibrant colors. I really didn’t notice anything disappointing about the image quality of Defiance. As for the audio, the primarily dialogue driven feature does very well on the 5.1 TrueHD track that Paramount usually uses. Spanish and French 5.1 tracks are also included.
As for extra features, there are a few. They are:
-Audio Commentary with Director Edward Zwick
–Defiance: Return To the Forest – This is a twenty-six minute HD feature (with what looks like quite a bit of SD footage too) that is basically a promo/making of piece. The actors and some of the crew talk shop about the film, its significance, the real Bielski story, etc. Plenty of production footage as well as lots of clips from the movie are shown.
-Children of the Otriad: The Families Speak – Another HD feature running about thirteen minutes that has footage of some of the children of those that were part of the ordeal in WWII.
-Scoring Defiance: A seven minute HD feature with production footage and talk about recording the film’s score.
-Bielski Partisan Survivors – This feature is just two minutes and is basically a black and white slide show of some photos Director Zwick took of some of the survivors from WWII. These photos are high res and are rather touching.
-Trailers – Two trailers of the film in HD are offered up as well.
Overall, Defiance is a fine Blu-ray release. Let’s get to the summary…