Jakob the Liar
USA 1999
Reviewed by Peter Matthews
Synopsis
Our synopses give away the plot in full, including surprise twists.
Nazi-occupied Poland, 1944. Jewish café proprietor Jakob overhears a broadcast reporting the defeat of the Soviet army in a nearby town, which actually means the Allies are close to winning the war. He meets Lina, a ten-year-old girl who has just escaped from a train bound for the death camps, and hides her in his attic. Later, Jakob discloses the news about the Russians to his friend Mischa. Assuming Jakob has a radio, Mischa quickly spreads the word. Jakob asks Mr Frankfurter for his daughter Rosa's hand in marriage.
The optimistic rumours lead Jakob's friend Herschel to an act of defiance that ends in his death. Jakob unsuccessfully tries to tell community leader and doctor Kirschbaum he doesn't own a radio. A faction headed by Frankfurter demand to hear a broadcast on Jakob's radio, but a power cut intervenes. Jakob is elected leader of the resistance. The Gestapo demands Kirschbaum attend a high-ranking SS officer with a heart condition who informs the doctor the ghetto will be shipped to the camps in the morning. He can save himself if he reveals the name of the radio owner. Kirschbaum commits suicide instead. The Gestapo take hostages who will be killed if the culprit doesn't step forward. Jakob turns himself in; under torture, he confesses there is no radio. He is marched to a public square and ordered to say the radio is a myth, but he merely laughs and is shot dead. The ghetto residents are sent to the camps. During the journey, Lina spies the Russian troops advancing in the distance.
Review
In prospect, Jakob the Liar sounds like one of those inspirational turkeys we jaded critics love to sharpen our knives over. Set during the Nazi occupation of Poland, the story tells how a simple Jewish man brings hope to his ghetto neighbours by fabricating radio bulletins about an impending Allied victory. The premise offers the kind of portentous irony that tempts Hollywood to make a sanctimonious meal of it. By way of further soggy discouragement, the star is Robin Williams, herein afforded an opportunity to resume his duties as Holy Fool of the Universe. I was expecting Life Is Beautiful meets Good Morning, Warsaw, but mea culpa, the actual film doesn't invite a cynical response. While it never scales any great heights, Jakob remains a doggedly honest work.
Jurek Becker's best-selling 1969 novel Jakob der Lügner was previously adapted by East German film-maker Frank Beyer in 1974, and it's worth remarking how Jakob's Teutonic 'k' has survived into this version. That foolhardy decision alone will probably scotch the movie's chances at the multiplex, but it suitably betokens a production that feels solidly European in temper. A veteran of French television, director Peter Kassovitz lacks the technical bravura of his more celebrated son Mathieu of La Haine fame (who has a minor role here). After a few experimental camera twirls, the senior Kassovitz hunkers down to a meditative rhythm which allows the gravity of faces and settings plenty of leisure to sink in. It might be stretching a point to say the film possesses a Bressonian austerity. Yet in their less rigorous way, Kassovitz and screenwriting partner Didier Decoin follow an analogous policy of dedramatising situations that would ordinarily head straight for the jugular.
For instance, the young deportee whom Jakob squirrels away in his attic is plainly meant to evoke Anne Frank. However, the movie draws upon this card only to underplay it, keeping the character a muted presence in the background and granting us the freedom to discover the tremulous beauty of the child actor Hannah Taylor Gordon for ourselves. The same drive towards asceticism leads the film-makers to throw a wet blanket over the possibilities for comedy.
Ostensibly, Jakob is a robust folk fable which shows how the traditional mordancy of Yiddish humour serves as spiritual capital against hard times. In broad accordance with this idea, the plot device of the apocryphal radio involves much quasi-farcical scurrying around and hiding in closets as a wide array of types vainly attempt to discern its whereabouts. Yet it's difficult to laugh when Kassovitz's scrupulously aloof staging drains away the emotional colouring in nearly everything. He gets sizeable help from DP Elemér Ragályi, whose minimalist palette varies muddy blues and browns with overcast greys. The monochrome gloom scarcely lifts even in the big cathartic sequence where, bruised and bloodied, Jakob defies his SS captors on the scaffold. At long last, a shaft of sunlight breaks through to punctuate the little man's moral triumph but it's an extremely watery beam that you have time to register only subliminally before it fades. Kassovitz doesn't supply epiphanies on cue, the audience is expected to use its own capacity for feeling.
The main exception to this rule is the final scene, which slaps on a pretty touch of magic realism to leave the viewer at least vaguely smiling. While the deus ex machina is duly tagged as ironic, it still comes across as a gimmicky concession to popcorn sensibilities. Otherwise, the movie is selfless and that includes Williams, who tones down his usual sad-sack clowning to give an impressively interiorised performance. Jakob the Liar has neither the cinematic panache nor the fascinating ambiguity of Life Is Beautiful. It's a decent, dignified, slightly mouldy picture whose virtues are largely negative ones. But movies of true integrity aren't so frequent that they can be easily passed up.
Credits
- Producers
- Marsha Garces Williams
- Steven Haft
- Screenplay
- Peter Kassovitz
- Didier Decoin
- Based on the book Jakob der Lügner by Jurek Becker
- Director of Photography
- Elemér Ragályi
- Editor
- Claire Simpson
- Production Designer
- Luciana Arrighi
- Music
- Edward Shearmur
- ©Global Entertainment Productions GmbH & Co. Film KG
- Production Companies
- Columbia Pictures presents a Blue Wolf Productions with Kasso Inc. production
- Executive Producer
- Robin Williams
- Co-producer
- Nick Gillott
- Associate Producer
- Poland Crew:
- Lew Rywin
- Production Co-ordinators
- Jennie McClean
- Gabriella Csoma
- Poland Crew:
- Andrzej Besztak
- Production Managers
- Sándor Baló
- Poland Crew:
- Michal Szczerbic
- Unit Production Manager
- Dusty Symonds
- Unit Manager
- Tamás Maros
- Location Managers
- László Roráriusz
- Poland Crew:
- Grazyna Kozlowska
- Assistant Directors
- Mark Egerton
- Liz Legum
- Caspar Campbell
- Péter Rácz
- Rita Nagy
- András Surányi
- Balázs Kovács
- Poland Crew:
- Marek Brodzki
- Magdalena Szwarcbart
- Jerzy Mizak
- Script Supervisor
- Nada Pinter
- Casting
- Billy Hopkins
- Suzanne Smith
- Kerry Barden
- Vanessa Pereira
- Simone Ireland
- Zsolt Csutak
- Magda Szwarcbart
- Risa Kes
- 2nd Camera Operator
- Tamás P. Nyerges
- Steadicam Operator
- Tamás P. Nyerges
- Visual Effects
- Sony Pictures Imageworks Inc
- Special Effects
- Ferenc Ormos
- Poland Crew:
- Miroslaw Bartosik
- Pyro Technician
- Poland Crew:
- Kazimierz Wróblewski
- Associate Film Editor
- Dana Mulligan
- Art Directors
- Branimir Babic
- Tibor Lázár
- Poland Crew:
- Grzegorz Piatkowski
- Set Decorator
- Ian Whittaker
- Costume Designer
- Wieslawa Starska
- Military Costumer
- Andrej Szenajch
- Wardrobe Mistress
- Malgorzata Stefaniak
- Make-up Supervisor
- Kati Jakóts
- Hair Supervisor
- Gabriella Németh
- Main/End Title Design
- Nina Saxon
- Opticals
- Cinema Research Corporation
- Additional Orchestration
- John Bell
- Music Editor
- Craig Pettigrew
- Music Recordist/Mixer
- Stephen P. McLaughlin
- Soundtrack
- "Beer Barrel Polka (Roll Out the Barrel)" by Lew Brown, Wladimir A. Timm, Jaromir Vejvoda, Vasek Zeman, performed by (1) The Andrews Sisters, (2) Will Glare; "Rakoczy March" by Hector Berlioz, performed by Cleveland Pops Orchestra, conducted by Louis Lane; "Gestillte Sehnsucht, Op. 91, Nr 1" by Johannes Brahms, performed by Marjana Lipovsek
- Sound Design
- Kim Christensen
- Sound Mixer
- Clive Winter
- Re-recording Mixers
- Leslie Shatz
- David Parker
- Supervising Sound Editor
- Patrick Dodd
- Dialogue Editor
- Richard Quinn
- Sound Effects Editor
- Jay Boekelheide
- ADR
- Julie Lindner
- Foley
- Malcolm Fife
- Artists:
- Margie O'Malley
- Marnie Moore
- Recordist:
- Frank Rinella
- Mixers:
- Steve Fontano
- Cast
- Robin Williams
- Jakob Heym
- Alan Arkin
- Frankfurter
- Bob Balaban
- Kowalsky
- Hannah Taylor Gordon
- Lina
- Michael Jeter
- Avron
- Armin Mueller-Stahl
- Professor Kirschbaum
- Liev Schreiber
- Mischa
- Nina Siemaszko
- Rosa Frankfurter
- Mathieu Kassovitz
- Herschel
- Justus von Dohnányi
- Preuss
- Mark Margolis
- Fajngold
- Gregg Bello
- Blumenthal
- Éva Igó
- Lina's mother
- István Balint
- Lina's father
- Kathleen Gati
- hooker
- János Gosztonyi
- Samuel
- Adám Rajhona
- the whistler
- Antal Leisen
- Peg-Leg
- Peter Rudolf
- Roman
- Jan Becker
- young German
- János Kulka
- Nathan
- Grazyna Barszczewska
- Mrs Frankfurter
- Judit Sagi
- Mrs Avron
- Ilona Psota
- grandmother
- Agi Margitai
- Miss Esther
- Iván Darvas
- Hardtloff
- László Borbély
- doctor
- Zolí Anders
- Meyer
- Miroslav Zbrojewicz
- SS officer 1
- Jozef Mika
- soldier
- György Szkladányi
- SS officer 2
- Zofia Saretok
- neighbour
- Michael Mehlmann
- escaping man
- Mirtill Micheller
- Orsolya Pflum
- Beatrix Bisztricsan
- 3 lady singers
- Certificate
- 12
- Distributor
- Columbia Tristar Films (UK)
- 10,794 feet
- 119 minutes 57 seconds
- Dolby digital/SDDS
- Colour by
- Rank Laboratories, London
- Prints by
- DeLuxe