Um Sinal de Esperança

Don't be put off by the negative comments. If you like the characters Robin Williams creates, and you like unusual dramas, you'll like Jakob the Liar. The film wanted to be Roberto Benigni and Life is Beautiful but never seemed to have the courage to go there, even with Robin Williams in the lead, until the last few scenes of the movie. However, being another Life is Beautiful is asking an awful lot. Life is Beautiful is one of the great films of all time. Having said that, Jakob the Liar is fiendishly good, creatively done, and Robin Williams does a fine job, even when Hannah Taylor-Gordon, who plays Lina, wasn't stealing every scene she was in. So, settle down and give this little movie a try. If nothing else, it's another solid performance by Robin Williams.

Perhaps best described as Good Morning Vietnam meets Schindler's List. Robin Williams plays Jakob, a Jewish prisoner in WW2 Germany who hears some news about the approaching Russian army, and lets it slip to his friend Mischa who believes Jakob has a radio to have gotten this news. Rumors then spread throughout the Jewish ghetto and soon everyone believes he has a radio, so he decides to make up news in order to give them some sense of hope in this holocaust. It's important to note that Williams is NOT trying to be funny in this film, which is appropriate considering the setting. Well written and produced with noteworthy performances

I won't repeat the plot as many other comments have taken care of that. Many of Robin Williams' performances have been Robin Williams playing a character -- there's a wink and a hint that he'll bust out with some shtick at any time. He (or the director, or both) contain that impulse to an impressive degree in this movie and do so without the excessive sincerity that Williams often substitutes for emotion in his other parts. (Good Will Hunting contains an overrated performance of this type.) Example: in the scene where he takes on the voices of Churchill, Stalin, and others, it's wholly within his character's desire to persuade the little girl (who's wonderfully played, by the way) that hope remains. I agree that some of the actors, notably Alan Arkin, aren't very good, but other, less-well-known ones support the movie well. In addition, I thought the production design, cinematography, and editing were thoughtful and well-done. And I liked the ending...

Over the years, I have found Robin Williams to be one of the most frustrating actors around. Clearly loaded with talent, in my opinion at least most of his movies have been disappointments. He either gives unnecessarily over-the-top performances that really don't fit the context, or he controls his natural comedic instincts to the point at which he comes across as uninspired. So I wasn't sure what to expect in "Jakob the Liar." What I found was a surprisingly good performance in a wonderful movie.

Williams plays Jakob Heym, confined to the Jewish Ghetto of Warsaw by the Nazis during the Second World War. With hope fading, Heym accidentally discovers that Russian troops aren't far away, and begins to spread the news. Others become convinced that he has a radio hidden, and Heym's fictional "news reports" from the BBC provide enough hope to keep the residents of the Ghetto going through this dark time.

Williams (also executive producer) did a fine job as Heym. As one would expect, his character comes across as something of a comedian ("I believe we're God's Chosen People; I just wish He had chosen someone else!") but his humour is appropriate; the sort of dark humour one would expect from people in this situation. The other performances faded into the background, not because they were bad but because Williams so dominated the movie. Special mention should go to Justus von Dohnanyi, though, who played the Nazi Commandant "Preuss." Dohnanyi manages to capture exactly the sort of slimy, inhuman character one would expect to be put in charge of such a business. The rest of the cast (primarily Hannah Taylor-Gordon as Lina and Liev Schreiber as Mischa) are good, but overshadowed by Williams.

The character of Kirschbaum (played by Armin Mueller-Stahl) filled me with sadness and represents a clear statement of the evils of Nazism. A world-famous cardiologist, Kirschbaum, because he is Jewish, is forbidden to practice medicine, and ends up cleaning toilets. Mueller-Stahl plays the character with a quiet dignity, and next to Williams is the clear highlight of the movie.

This movie represents a wonderful testimony to the importance of hope in helping people see themselves through what must seem to be impossible situations. Although fictional, it is an important movie for those with an interest in the events of this era.

7/10

Jakob the Liar features a good straight-up performance by Robin Williams and a terrific supporting cast, but more than that it is a surprisingly complex film that reflects many of the classic traits of Yiddish humor. In Yiddish humor, the shtetl, or classic village, as immortalized in the wonderful stories of Sholomon Aleichem (think Fiddler on the Roof and Tevya, which is a direct adaptation from Aleichem's tales) are full of set characters - and they are here - the Professor is like the Rebbe, Jakob is a schnorre (someone who loves to get things for free) who becomes the mensch (the upstanding man), and so on.

Of all the films in the Holocaust corpus this is one of the few that reflects with fantasy and imagination and humor what suffering means in Jewish culture. One can argue that films about the Holocaust necessarily are depressing (or must have that Hollywood lift of hope - why?! - there was no hope) - but here there is a genuine attempt to speak into the culture of Ghetto Judaism and refer back to Aleichem's wonderful mix of family, suffering, and laughter.

The film is not wholly successful - the humour is wry, but it never quite gets to the sorrow in it, and replaces that with genuine sorrow. However it defies our norms of this style of film and as such, very correctly, challenges our notions and images of daily life outside the camps.

All in all this rewards viewing at a deeper level than simply a man who invents a radio to give others hope - it is a real reflection of pre-war Judaic humor and as such is a very worthwhile attempt to preserve the deeper meaning of a Jewish understanding that humor is one of the better ways, and sometimes the only way, to cope when darkness falls.