Why Director Jonathan Jakubowicz Wanted To Tell A More Uplifting Holocaust Story With ‘Resistance’

The Holocaust was a dark time marked by barbarism and unimaginable cruelty that led to the deaths of 11 million people. It was also a time marked by resistance and kindness that led to the saving of countless lives. Incredible stories of the latter are a reminder that not all human beings lost their moral compass when it was much easier to go along with the Nazis and their genocidal plans.

When it came time to add his own addition to the genre of Holocaust cinema, writer/director Jonathan Jakubowicz (Hands of Stone) wanted to capture a bit of that optimism. The Venezuelan filmmaker, who grew up with Shoah survivors on both sides of his family, knew that trying to make a Schindler’s List-type movie would prove to be too painful. What he settled on was Resistance, a biopic of Marcel Marceau, the famous French artist and mime, who also happened to be a Jewish defier of the Germans.

“I never thought I would make a movie about the war because it was too emotional,” Jakubowicz told me during a recent phone interview. “Until I saw the story of Marcel Marceau and his first cousin, Georges Loinger, and all the Jewish boy scouts who saved 10,000 children during the war. I felt there was something different about it because, in a way, it was about salvation and not about extermination.”

The director’s elevator pitch for the IFC-distributed film (hitting digital platforms later this week) is “the story of an artist who renounces his self-centered goals of becoming a great artist and becomes a hero.” His main source of inspiration for the screenplay was Loinger (played in the film by Son of Saul’s Géza Röhrig), who was 106-years-old when they first met.

“He told me stories firsthand and I was blown away,” Jakubowicz said. “I was like, ‘This is really one of the most important stories that’s ever been told.’ It became my mission to tell it and I didn’t stop until I did.”

Jakubowicz also saw this as a chance to explore the concept of Jews standing up for and saving themselves. Films and shows like Defiance, Inglourious Basterds, and Hunters are so satisfying to watch because they depict Jewish people taking matters into their own hands and striking back at oppressors that want them dead. At its core, however, Resistance makes a compelling case for how the simple act of survival can be just as powerful as bringing the fight to your enemy.

“A lot of the great movies that we see of the war are about third parties saving them and righteous among nations. Those stories are really important,” the director continued. “But what I find very unique about this story is how they decided to do it themselves, and I think that is an important tale for this moment. Not only for Jews, but for everybody in the world to really take responsibility.”

Jesse Eisenberg (The Social Network, Batman v Superman) takes up the role of Marceau (his birth name was Marcel Mangel), who, similar to Al Jolson’s character in The Jazz Singer, doesn’t want to follow in his father’s footsteps as a kosher butcher.

“Jesse’s mother was a professional clown. He grew up watching his mother paint her face white and go to work. He also had family in the Holocaust. I honestly knew that and I wrote [the film] thinking of Jesse,” Jakubowicz admitted. “There’s something about Jesse … he often plays the villain or a very tormented dark character in movies. The character he plays in Resistance ends up being exactly the opposite of that. He’s a character who risks his life to save the lives of others.”

As the conflict begins to grow out of control in Europe, Marcel (who passed away in 2007 at the age of 84) realizes that his skills as an entertainer can both help put war orphans (like Bella Ramsey’s Elsbeth) at ease and undermine the Third Reich’s occupation of France. Along with his brother, Alain (Félix Moati), and their two friends, Emma (Clémence Poésy) and Mila (Vica Kerekes), he joins the the resistance movement in the city of Lyon. Like Eisenberg, Poésy has a direct connection to World War II, as her grandmother actually fought with the French Resistance.

“One thing she told me when we started working together, was that her grandmother would constantly tell her the same thing, that they never saw themselves as being part of this heroic thing that’s one day gonna be celebrated,” Jakubowicz said. “The notion that normal people and civilians can really rise up and take on the Nazis is something I find very inspiring and I think it’s part of what’s gonna reach an audience in a moment where we feel so powerless in front of all the things that are happening in the world.”

Students of history will know that during the war, Lyon was lorded over by Gestapo officer Klaus Barbie, an SS man known for his ruthless treatment of individuals who attempted to subvert Nazi rule over France. In the film, he’s played by Matthias Schweighöfer, an actor famous for more comedic roles in his native Germany. Not wanting to portray Barbie (who was eventually caught by Nazi hunters) as “a cliche, stereotypical James Bond villain that we sometimes see in movies,” Jakubowicz wrote the character as an evil man, who whole-heartedly believes he’s doing the right thing.

“These guys were monsters, but they were also human beings and I find that deeply disturbing,” the director explained. “We always said that the movie shows Marcel as a hero, who doesn’t think he’s a hero [and] Barbie is the devil and the villain, but he thinks he’s the hero. In a way, it’s a mirror image of two characters on opposing sides and we worked very hard trying to convey that.”

For the look of the film, Jakubowicz and his director of photography, M.I. Littin-Menz (Hands of Stone, The Vast of Night), dispensed with the gritty, realistic aesthetic that dictates the look of many projects set during WWII and the Holocaust. Rather, they looked at how Marceau’s “obsession” with the work of Marc Chagall could create an artistically-inspired visual language for the project.

“To look at it from a slightly more lyrical and operatic approach to all this reality,” Jakubowicz said. “Because at the end of the day, it’s what’s keeping everyone alive. It’s optimism and [Marcel’s] ability to see everything as an opportunity to create. The look was not only in the photography, but also in the production design. There was always that ambition of giving you a world that’s slightly more artistic than your traditional World War II movie.”

In terms of its storytelling, Resistance is wrapped around a framing device of General Patton (played by Westworld’s Ed Harris) relating Marcel’s tale of bravery to a collection of troops after the war. The idea came about when Jakubowicz learned that Marcel performed for Patton and his troops following the liberation of France.

“To me, there’s an audience that likes to see the top military men in their war movies. In a way, we’re making the opposite movie. We’re making a movie not about a soldier, but about a mime,” he continued. “The notion that a mime can be a war hero, is something that I found fascinating … The notion that the toughest men, arguably in history—the army that defeated the Nazis—took a moment to appreciate a mime not only as a performer, but specifically as a war hero.”

Filmed just days after the tragic shooting at the Tree of Life synagogue in the fall of 2018, the scene unfolds at the actual Nazi rally grounds in Nuremberg, where Adolph Hitler planned to build a massive stadium for delivering speeches.

“It was very incredible for all of us to be there in the heart of the beast. In a way, [we were] exorcising this coliseum of hate with a performance by a mime in front of the troops that destroyed Hitler,” the filmmaker said. “The emotional relationship to history and to the event and to the place, is truly unforgettable and I think it was unforgettable for everybody who was involved.”

During the shoot in Germany, Géza Röhrig not only served as a member of the cast, but as the production’s unofficial spiritual sherpa. In real life, the actor actor is also a poet, philosopher, and political activist.

“I think Géza is almost like a rabbi … He brought a deep connection to Jewish spirituality, which he kept sharing on set when we were shooting with the other actors and anybody who would listen,” Jakubowicz added. “Being in Germany makes you very Jewish. I don’t know what it is, but they say that if you want to turn an atheist Jew into a believer, just have him spend a few months in Germany … Géza played a big part in front of and behind the camera, making this whole event very spiritual and bringing everybody close to their roots.”

One anecdote in particular sums up why this film’s message of Jewish survival during the Holocaust is so important. Jakubowicz cast his mind back to one Friday evening when a shoot was just about to wrap up for the day in a Bavarian castle. In the movie, this medieval-type setting is a place where the boy scouts look after orphaned children before deciding to smuggle them over the mountains and into Switzerland.

“We wrapped right before Shabbos. All the children that you see in the movie are Jewish,” the writer/director remembered. “The castle was in Germany, in the heart of Bavaria, which was the state where the Nazis were basically born. And Géza, because it was Shabbos, did the blessing and the prayer. You had a gathering of Jewish children shooting a movie about Jewish orphans during the war in the heart of Germany, lighting candles. And we were surrounded by a crew of Germans, many of whom had never seen this before. I have to say a lot of them were in tears. There was something so revealing about the whole thing.”

Co-starring Édgar Ramírez and Karl Markovicz, Resistance arrives on VOD this Friday, March 27.