Gedenkstu vi ikh hob dikh gelernt haltn a shpayer in di hent?

[sovay]

Some thoughts on returning from Defiance (2008):

1. What idiot let Liev Schreiber get away without an Oscar nomination?

2. I felt there should be a koan for the Bielski Otriad: if two Jews have a philosophical argument in the middle of a forest, when is the third going to pitch in (and is he going to punch someone)? This is not a complaint. A Holocaust film without hagiography is one that works for me.

3. Now that we've proved that general audiences will watch a film with Jewish partisans, who can we get to adapt A Verse from Babylon, please?

I wish I could play my formerly purchased music from iTunes. "Yisrolik" and "Shtil di nakht" are both locked. strange_selkie?

Comments

[sovay]

and particularly for Liev, who I consider sadly underrated and -used in most cases.

The movie has its share of missteps—almost all in places where the scriptwriter or the director didn't trust the story to carry its own power, and of course it does—but Liev Schreiber is not one of them. I have loved him ever since I saw him in, God help me, Kate & Leopold, where his immature, amateur, not-really-an-asshole ex-boyfriend was the best thing in the film aside from Hugh Jackman accompanying himself on "I Am the Very Model of a Modern Major-General," but this is the first time I've seen him in a role that I thought gave him anywhere near the breadth he can command. Daniel Craig isn't a misstep, either. For anyone who still thinks he can play only handsome thugs (one of whom happens to be James Bond), Defiance should be an effective rebuke. But he wasn't the one I thought was going to melt a hole in the screen.