Defiance...

Last night I watched Defiance which is a movie recounting the story of the Bielski brothers, who were among the Jews who faced the Nazi onslaught during the World War II. Tuvia, the oldest of the four comes to find his brothers in the woods after their parents were killed by Nazi sympathesizers. Asael Bielski, the youngest, breaks down and you wonder if he is going to make it through the ordeal that awaits them. Tuvia and the others begin to forage for and try to gather food and supplies from people in the nearby village who were willing to help them. While on one of these trips, Tuvia overhears that the local police chief was involved in killing his parents - after which he returned the favor at the chief's house. The chief had proudly claimed that he had caught 15 Jews the previous day and that the Germans were paying 500 rubles for each one. Koscik, an old Belorussian, was obviously taking a huge risk hiding and helping Jews like Tuvia, something his wife didn't seem to approve of.

From Defiance

This got me thinking - what would I do if I was in Koscik's place? What if there was a group of human beings, being persecuted... for no sane reason except that they belong to a certain race/caste/creed... Helping them results in death or something just as bad. Turning them over to the authorities would yield a large reward. At times like this, when everything goes against your conscience, how does one preserve it? How do you know where to draw the line between your instincts for survival and preventing yourself from falling into a state where you knowingly allow your fellow human being's to come to harm? Were the Kosciks or the Schindlers of the time expecting to be rewarded by the Jews or be written about in the history books? I doubt it! They would have no way of knowing if the Nazi juggernaut in all its might would ever be crushed. The Jews were just too weak, and were already depleted. These good samaritan's were helping them because they realized it was the right thing to do, and they were going to do no matter what. I think that is what differentiates the heroes from the regular person - they're ready to go against the flow, no matter how bad the odds are - because they believe they're doing the right thing!

Zus Bielski looks to be the toughest of the Bielski brothers - he is big built and looks just about as defiant as anyone can ever be. And, he wants revenge - especially on the day he meets a group of Jews fleeing into the forest, who were from the same village as his wife and child, and they tell him that he will never see his loved ones again. In a rage he gathers a group of armed friends and ambushes a few soldiers, kills them, grabs their arms but when a larger group of soldiers show up driving down the same road - he loses Azael who is chased by several Germans into the woods in the opposite direction.

Tuvia, who prefers diplomacy to armed conflict does not approve of Zus' strategies. The brothers argue over who should lead their ever-growing group of followers (men, women and children in need of protection, food and shelter), who have been taken under Tuvia and Zus's wing. Zus would prefer leading a smaller band of able men to extract revenge on nearby anti-semitic villagers and Nazi officers, while Tuvia feels they should only use force defensively and try their best to stay alive until the war was over. After one quarrel Zus leaves to join a Russian armed contingent that was fighting the Germans from the same forest.

From Defiance

The movie goes on to portray how this large group of Jews manages to organize itself - they have a Rabi among them, begin sewing, training even the women how to use guns and so on. There are groups of men who are tasked to find food for the others, while the weaker ones stay in camp and either help build shelters or cook food and so on. Azael, who had managed to escape his pursuers is growing to be a leader in his own right. Despite being smaller in size, he shows resolve and the ability to encourage and rally people with inspiring speeches. Tuvia's peaceful methods don't always help him maintain his leadership though. With food going scarce, one of the men in his food-gathering groups starts challenging Tuvia's leadership. He claims that the more able men who do the work of getting finding food for the rest should be given a larger share of the food rations. Tuvia had mandated that everyone should get the same amount. By this time Tuvia had caught pneumonia and was quite weak. One day things come to a head - Arkady, the leader of the food-gathering band of men proclaims that Tuvia isn't the commander anymore. Tuvia ends up taking out his pistol and shooting the man. Nobody questions Tuvia's leadership again... But did Arkady deserve it? Is leadership worth another's life?

The movie is beautiful. It is certainly one of the best I have watched lately. Unlike Avatar, which was the last one I enjoyed, this movie didn't for once make me wonder at the cinematic beauty of the movie-making process. I was caught up too deep in the intricacies of the story itself - there was so much depth to each character, so much to learn about life under difficult circumstances, about leadership, about heroism, about faith. Toward the end, the Rabi confesses to Tuvia that he had almost lost his own faith at one point, and that Tuvia was the one who gave it back to him. He thanked God for having sent Tuvia to lead his people out of the wilderness like the Jews believed their leader Moses had during their exodus from Egypt millenia before.

One of the touching moments in the movie for me, was when the rabi leads them into prayer and ends it by asking God to grant them one final blessing - to take back the gift of their holiness. Why was it that the Jews were persecuted so much? What made the chosen people from the Old testament, the very same ones who have been subjected to the worst torments anyone could ever go through. How can anyone justify treating others so inhumanely especially through generalization? How did power corrupt someone like Hitler who was brilliant enough to become the supreme commander of Germany and over-run almost all of the great civilized Europe so quickly, to lose his conscience completely? And how do lesser (known) people like Koscik, Tuvia, Azael and Zus, manage to keep theirs despite all the adversities they live in? Where does this moral compass come from and what makes it flounder in some, despite them having everything they want and need, and hold steady in others who do not?

Life is full of mysteries...!