STUCK IN A BOX
Story of Marceau’s WWII heroics can’t break out
Featuring a fine performance by Jesse Eisenberg as a young Marcel Marceau, who would go on to become the world’s most famous mime, writer-director Jonathan Jakubowicz’s “Resistance” tells the story of young Jews in France trying to save Jewish children whose parents have been killed by the Nazis. Some of these children, including the angelic Elsbeth (played by Bella Ramsey of “Game of Thrones” and “The Worst Witch”) have been taken in by a Catholic priest and have been coached to pretend to be Catholic orphans and to memorize hymns and prayers.
In opening scenes set in Munich, Elsbeth’s mother and father (Edgar Ramirez) are dragged out of their home and shot to death in the streets. The film, which has some narrative and geographic issues, then shifts to Strasbourg, France, where Marcel performs his Charlie Chaplin impression at a boozy cabaret and tangles with his strict father Charles Mangel (Karl Markovics), a kosher butcher from Poland, who wants his son to be a butcher and not a “clown.” “I am an actor,” Marcel demurs. Being an actor will later save his life. When the Nazis drop off German Jewish orphans in Strasbourg, Marcel and his love interest Emma (Clemence Poesy) join other local young people in helping them settle down in an abandoned castle.
Before long, Nazi-occupied France becomes much more dangerous for Jews, thanks to the efforts of such SS and Gestapo murderers as the monstrous Klaus Barbie, aka the Butcher of Lyon (producer Matthias Schweighofer), who directs his campaigns against the Jews and the Resistance from his headquarters at Lyon’s lavish Terminus Hotel, where one of his favorite things is shooting helpless captives in the hotel’s empty swimming pool. Viewers with an interest in this story are urged to watch Marcel Ophuls’ magnificent 1988 documentary “Hotel Terminus: The Life and Times of Klaus Barbie,” which charts Barbie’s reign of terror and his escape to South America,
where he lived for decades after the war. In Limoges, Marcel joins the Resistance. But eventually he comes to the realization that saving children, who will live to have families of their own, is more humane and productive than the Resistance’s cyclical acts of revenge against the Nazis. This lesson comes at a terrible cost. My problems with “Resistance” have to do with the screenplay by Venezuelan writer-director Jakubowicz (“Secuestro Express”), and Jakubowicz’s shaky storytelling abilities. One might expect a film on this subject to be in French and/or German. I confess it sounded odd in accented English. Eisenberg’s miming skills are adequate. But I wasn’t sure what to think of a wildly predictable chase through an Alpine forest or a framing device featuring Ed Harris as
General George S. Patton, a role previously immortalized by George C. Scott. While it is fascinating to learn that Marceau was a member of Patton’s staff in Nuremberg after the war, “Resistance” repeatedly falls short of firstrate. Poesy gives Emma’s thirst for revenge an authenticity lacking in her ardor for Eisenberg’s Marcel. While Eisenberg brings his natural warmth, intelligence, humor and courage to the role of Marceau, Schweighofer is so terrifying as Barbie, you fear the monster will steal the movie.
(“Resistance” contains scene of violence and terrifying language)