Zwick defies Holocaust canon

Something new: Director Edward Zwick’s new film “Defiance” looks at the Holocaust from an atypical angle. (Stephen Lovekin/Getty Images)

SAN FRANCISCO — Although popular history has paid little heed to armed Jewish resistance to perpetrators of the Holocaust, director Edward Zwick tells a different story in his latest film, “Defiance.”

Inspired by Nechama Tec’s book about the remarkable Bielski partisans, some 1,200 Eastern European Jews who fortified themselves in the forests of Nazi-occupied Belarus, Zwick, 56, resolved to set the record straight in the movie, which opens Friday.

The film finds Daniel Craig — the fair-haired, blue-eyed Bond of “Casino Royale” and “Quantum of Solace” — leading the resistance as iron-willed Tuvia Bielski.

“I was loath to do a movie about the Holocaust, not because I’m afraid of it, but because the greatest minds of our age — artists, intellectuals, philosophers — have done that, and what could I possibly add?” asks Zwick. “But I believe something needed to be added to the dialogue. The reality is more complex, but the iconography from that time is one of passivity and victimization.

“Part of that is because of the enduring legacy of Nazi propaganda, and part comes from what the Jews themselves have inadvertently done in an attempt to create this industry of remembrance. The images we’ve taken from the Holocaust convey unspeakable horror, but they’ve also perpetuated a single, overriding image. Yet there was resistance everywhere, not just in the Warsaw ghettos.”

Though hardly alone in their decision to defy Hitler's roving executioners, the Bielski partisans — men, women and children — faced unthinkable odds in their quest to survive.

To tell their story, Zwick, a Harvard grad by way of Chicago, had to earn the trust of the Bielski descendants, whose stories and video footage of the late Tuvia Bielski gave him rare insight into a family whose fierce patriarchs, Tuvia and his brothers, would be the heroes of "Defiance." He also had to find the right man to play Tuvia, a peasant farmer forced by circumstances into a leadership role he never desired.

Craig, a working-class British actor and veteran of the West End stage, seemed the perfect choice. "Daniel seems most comfortable in chameleon-like roles," says Zwick. "I don't think he ever imagined himself as an iconic leading man. I've always sensed a slight discomfort on his part since he took the Bond role.

"What he found here, learning Russian, working in an ensemble cast, made him feel more at home. He's a generous actor. There are actors who find subtle ways to put themselves ahead of a scene. They're piggish. Daniel has a genuine humility that allows him to slip back into the ensemble and let other actors shine. That speaks to his training, but it also gives you an idea of who he is as a person and why I wanted him to star in this movie."