Film preview: Defiance

Published on Thursday 25 December 2008 16:16

STEPPING through the mist-shrouded Lithuanian forest, Daniel Craig looks grim-faced. It is the winter of 2007 – he has yet to embark on his 007 jaunts to Chile, Panama and Italy – and it is bitterly cold. Craig wears a thick woolly jumper, a battered leather jacket and grips an MP40 submachine gun.

He is midway through his three-month shoot on Defiance, the tale of the Bielski brothers, a peasant family from the Belarusian village of Stankiewicze, who led a group of Jewish resistance fighters during the Second World War, and he's finding both the story, and the weather, affecting.

"For anyone who's Jewish I think a story like this is very personal," he says during a break in filming. "And even for me. My grandfathers fought in the Second World War and saw a lot of what went on. It's impossible not to feel some personal involvement, and that's why stories like this are still relevant. It's very recent history and it doesn't stop happening in the world.

"The First World War was the war to end all wars; and with the Second World War everyone said, 'That'll never happen again.' Yet it keeps on happening again and again." He offers a faint smile. "As for the cold. A lot of vodka. That's the only way to get through it."

Craig says that both of his grandfathers served, one fighting in Russia, the other during the Allied push on D-Day. "The vast majority of stories we hear about heroes are embellished afterwards, because they're good for morale," he says. "They're good for all of us. Usually, though, the truth is much more complicated and much more interesting, and the people involved usually don't want to talk about it. That was certainly my experience with my grandfathers."

Indeed, until recently, the Bielskis' remarkable tale remained largely unknown. The group formed in 1941 as Tuvia Bielski (played by Craig in the movie) and his brothers Zus (Liev Schreiber) and Asael (Jamie Bell), led a rag-tag group of Jewish refugees into the Nalibocka Forest in Belarus, in a bid to escape Nazi persecution. By the time the country was liberated in 1944, the Bielskis had rescued 1,200 fellow Jews, more than Oskar Schindler.

"What I find fascinating about Tuvia's character is that he's thrust into this situation," Craig continues. "Tuvia Bielski is a reluctant hero; he doesn't want to be the leader of these people, and certainly doesn't want to be the one forcing all the decisions. Even with the philosophy of 'save one life and you save the world', he still doesn't really want to do it.

"He's like, 'Leave me alone. I want to get through this with my family.' Then there's that really fascinating moral switch which happens in his head – he can't just save his family. If he's there, he'll have to save other people too. That's what makes this character particularly interesting. Really, most true heroes don't set out to be heroes"

After the war ended, Tuvia Bielski moved to America, working as a taxi driver in Manhattan until his death in 1987. His story was known only to a few, but it came to the attention of Jewish sociologist Nechama Tec who, after several years of research, published the book Defiance: The Bielski Partisans, incorporating many first-hand accounts. Her book was optioned by Ed Zwick, the Oscar-winning director of The Last Samurai and Blood Diamond.

"I'd never heard about the Bielski story," concludes Craig, "but as I soon as I read it I was in. I'd wanted to work with Ed Zwick for a while, and making it, we can feel that the film has some personal significance to him."

Indeed it has. Zwick was born and raised in Illinois, his grandfather moving to the US from Poland after the First World War, but some of his family members fought, and died, during the Second World War. "My grandfather had brothers who stayed behind in Eastern Europe, one of whom went into the Polish forest and never came out," says Zwick. "I think for many, defiance, and fighting persecution, was in the culture of that time. It is certainly evoked by the Bielski brothers."

Standing in the freezing forests, Zwick looks thoughtful.

"Sometimes it's hard to look around those forests," he says after we've returned to the capital city, Vilnius. "You can look at these streets even, which are full of people living their lives and then you reckon with the past, and, more importantly the forgetfulness of the past."

As he did with his 1989 film Glory, Zwick is dipping into one of history's lesser-known chapters, and hopes to engage in a bout of myth-busting. "You have these chapters of history that get lost," he says. "Sometimes that's down to political agendas or because mythologies are created. Ideas and events that are contradictory to those myths often disappear.

"That's what's happened here. The image of European Jews going passively to their deaths is inaccurate. We hope this film corrects that view, while also exploring the specifics of the Bielski story. You have to consider how they felt. Where is God when they are hiding and scratching out this existence in the forests? Where is love in the forest? What is it like to be a child in the forest? All these things were important."

In December 2008, over a year later, Defiance is finally ready to hit the screen, and the actors are in a buoyant mood. Craig, best known as James Bond, has a damaged shoulder – a wound from his most recent 00-outing – but says that he's enjoying his "enforced holiday" and will be ready to work again in January, while Schreiber is a very happy man, awaiting the birth of his second child with actress Naomi Watts. The third of the Bielski brothers, Jamie Bell, meanwhile is just glad to see his co-stars.

"I grew up with my mum and sister so I have no experience of having brothers. So, on set, the way me, Daniel and Liev bonded was really fascinating," he beams. "It happened instantaneously. Even today, seeing them here in the hotel, was great. It was funny just seeing Daniel Craig now. He saw my feeble facial hair and was like, 'What's this? Is this a new look?'" Bell scratches the aforementioned facial hair.

"It was a bit like that on set," he continues. "I remember one day he decided to throw me onto the bonnet of a car. I think that's how James Bond plays with his brothers, ramming them into cars! We had a great time, though, hanging out, and having the odd vodka because it was so damn cold."

Bell says he is fascinated by the period in history the film covers. The Billy Elliott star, now 22, has already played one real-life hero, Ralph 'Iggy' Ignatowski, in Clint Eastwood's Iwo Jima epic Flags of our Fathers. "I remember studying history at school," he continues, "and seeing the footage of the liberation of Bergen-Belsen. That was horrific; those images scarred retinas.

"Making this film you realise the level of Jewish resistance. I think there were 20-30,000 Jewish partisans, and even that figure might not be accurate because there would have been a lot of partisans who didn't admit that they were Jewish, because of the anti-Semitism. When you learn about how they fought back, it's inspiring. You want to be a part of a story like this."

&#149 Defiance is released on 9 January