Following the deaths of their parents in 1941, Tuvia, Zus, and Asael Bielski, with their youngest brother, Aron, hide out in the forest near their home. They very quickly find others coming to join them, and the eldest, Tuvia (Daniel Craig), finds himself leading a band of Jews, which becomes known as the Bielski Otriad. At first, Tuvia seeks revenge for his parents’ deaths, killing the man responsible, as well as his two sons. But subsequently he changes his approach, deciding instead to save those his enemies sought to exterminate.
"Our revenge is to live," he explains.
His brother Zus (Liev Schreiber) has different ideas. He disagrees with Tuvia’s attempt to save people who, in their previous lives, would have treated the Bielskis with disdain. When discussing their worth with his brother, Zus defends his position, calling them "pretentious Jews".
"Jews who stuck up their noses at us. Jews who would go out of their way to lock their daughters away from our dirty hands," he says.
He believes he and his brothers should prioritise their own interests, and at first, Tuvia agrees, considering using the others as a distraction to allow them to escape if the Germans were to find them.
But as the film progresses, Tuvia grows more attached to the people he is leading, and he begins to feel a sense of responsibility for them. Tuvia’s former teacher, Shimon Haretz (Allan Corduner), reinforces this idea, telling him, "The Talmud says if you save a life you must take responsibility for it."
Zus, on the other hand, becomes more disillusioned, eventually abandoning the forest community, along with some others who would rather be fighting and killing Germans – dealing out their own brand of revenge.
The third brother, Asael (Jamie Bell), finds himself trapped between his two conflicting siblings. As the film progresses, he matures and becomes an important support for Tuvia in his position of leadership, at one point having to take over his role to encourage the group when Tuvia gives up hope.
The director, Edward Zwick, sought to help the audience gain an understanding of what it might have been like to be in such a situation, and to ask, "What would I have done in those circumstances?"
Tuvia and Zus exemplify two different responses to the position they find themselves in. Where Tuvia seeks to save his friends, Zus sets out to destroy his enemies. Following Tuvia’s return from avenging their parents’ deaths, Zus learns that his wife and child have been killed, and he determines to take revenge on their murderers.
Tuvia has come to the conclusion that murder is not the answer, and tries to convince Zus. But his brother is unwilling to succumb to Tuvia’s argument. If Tuvia could take revenge, then so should he be able to. But under his brother’s leadership, Zus is unable to fully satisfy his desire to fight. Conflicting perspectives lead Zus and a few others to join the nearby Russian partisan camps. Here they are able to fully unleash their fury against their oppressors. But when they find themselves surrounded by the German forces, the Russians opt to flee the area, abandoning the Bielski Otriad. Zus realises that his place is alongside his brothers and he leads his friends back to fight alongside Tuvia and Asael.
The Jews living in the forest community take an approach to revenge similar to that of Zus and his men. This is seen in a particularly evocative scene in which a German soldier is captured and brought into camp. But where Zus and his men fight the Germans on equal terms, with guns and mines, most of these Jews match his description as being "too weak and afraid to fight for themselves".
They only feel safe fighting back when the odds are clearly in their favour with little probability of changing. And so, when the unarmed soldier is brought into the camp, the people take out all their rage and frustration against the Nazi regime on this one soldier. They demand justice, and punish him for the atrocities carried out on their own families by Nazis.
Tuvia tries to make his way towards the soldier, but realises there is no point trying to save him. That one German soldier personified all that the Jews loathed. Is it really justice, to beat a helpless man to death? Very likely he himself was responsible for numerous Jewish deaths.
Tuvia holds some deep-seated ideals: to avoid becoming like the Nazis, not becoming murderers or animals. And yet others are not so committed to his ideals. They are presented with an opportunity to vent their frustrations, and they set to with vigour.
Even Tuvia himself does not flinch from killing when the situation demands. In order to maintain the rules laid down by himself, he has to kill a dissident who claims a right to a larger portion of food.
Daniel Craig, discussing his character, says, "He really was a dictator in the camp, yet his rules and regulations may have helped them all stay alive, so it raises a lot of interesting questions."
Revenge and punishment are key themes in the film. Where can we draw the line between them, and do we humans have the right to deal out what we see as justice? Zus quotes Deuteronomy 32:35 and Romans 12:19, saying, "Vengeance is mine. Who said that Tuvia?" His brother responds by asking him, "Oh what? This is God’s work you’re doing now Zus?"
Zus is using God to defend his own actions – actions which spring from his own feelings, rather than any innate knowledge of God’s will. People, who have a vested interest in seeing the punishment of a particular individual or group, cannot dispense unbiased justice. This can only come from God.
The verse in Deuteronomy goes on to say, "Their foot shall slip in due time; for the day of their calamity is at hand, and the things to come hasten upon them."
God does punish the wicked, but at the same time he demands that we do not avenge ourselves upon them, and that we do not repay evil with evil. Tuvia realises this when he returns from killing the man who had murdered his parents. It did not bring him any sort of fulfillment, and he recognises that there are more constructive ways of expending his energy. And so he spends the rest of the film leading this ever-expanding community of Jews, and keeping them safe in the forest from enemy attack.
How important is one life over another? Tuvia’s position on the matter seems to shift back and forth. Towards the beginning of the film he proposes sleeping away from the rest of the group, so that, were the Germans to stumble upon the main group, he and his brothers would be alerted by the gunshots and escape to safety. But later he defends to Zus the value of the lives he is now responsible for, and takes great risks on their behalf.
When Zus volunteers to risk his own life, though, in order to obtain medicine to treat the typhus spreading through the camp, Tuvia tries to discourage him. Even at this point in the film, subsequent to their argument and parting of ways, we can see Zus’s loyalty to his brother. It is obvious that Tuvia is dying of typhus himself; Zus knows that this medicine is the only hope of saving his brother, and so he is willing to take the risk.
Tuvia and Zus represent two conflicting arguments about how we should behave. On the one hand, we find Tuvia, whose beliefs lead him away from the murder of his enemies. He has a sense of what is right and wrong, this determines each action he takes. Such an approach is known as deontological ethics.
Zus’s beliefs are in stark contrast with his brother’s. He embodies the approach known as consequentialist ethics, which argues that if the end result is good, then any means of attaining that result is right.
Both brothers’ aim is to protect the Jews in their care. Tuvia restrains himself, because he is haunted by the faces of the three men he killed. He doesn’t want to be responsible for more unnecessary deaths. He doesn’t become a pacifist, but his fighting is restricted to the defence of the community.
Zus, however, has reasons beyond just protecting the group. He also feels a need to find an outlet for his wrath, and does this by taking up arms and actively attacking the Nazis. The difference between Tuvia’s revenge killing and Zus’s is that Tuvia killed the men in their own home, and they were unprepared. This murder leaves Tuvia with a sense of guilt, which leads him to reevaluate his principles. But Zus kills his enemies in battle, which perhaps leads to a lesser feeling of guilt, as his opponents are fighting back, with a chance of defending themselves.
We aren’t in such an extreme situation as the one in which Tuvia and Zus found themselves in, and hopefully we never will be. But the wrongdoings of people against us is an all-too-common occurrence. Often these are very minor and can be easily overlooked. But our natural response to serious injuries is to seek revenge. This only leads to a never-ending cycle, which can only be broken by forgiveness, an idea central to the gospel message.
We have all grievously hurt God, and were he to seek revenge upon us there would be no hope for us. But instead, he set us an example to follow by first forgiving us. Thus – at a personal level, at least – we should be willing to forgive those who wrong us rather than avenging that wrong.
This article was first published on Damaris' Culturewatch website (www.culturewatch.org) - used with permission.
© Copyright Richard Blakely (2009)
