"Jakob", not a convincing lie
Jakob The Liar A Film Review By Michael Redman Copyright 1999 by Michael Redman
**1/2 (out of ****)
Sometimes I think that our entire culture is dependent on illusions to continue functioning. We have commonly held sets of beliefs that exist to benefit the society but we are convinced they serve the individual.
Working an unfulfilling job all your life so you can pay the mortgage and retire for five years before you die is a good thing. Security will make you happy. It's the big lie that most of us buy into. It's a necessary mass hallucination. Otherwise where would we find people willing to march off each morning to spend their day in drudgery so we can increase the gross national product?
Most of our time is spent in the illusions we tell ourselves. We need them to continue. Everything's going to work out fine. If we work hard at something, we'll succeed. Smoke and mirrors.
Films are definitely illusion. We sit in a dark room and pretend for a while what's happening in flickering images on a huge white wall is real. Occasionally it's enlightening. Sometimes, entertaining. But it's never life. Rather, it's the illusion of life to give us a brief respite from the illusions of life.
Jakob (Robin Williams) finds himself in the illusion business. Held prisoner in a walled-off Jewish ghetto in Poland near the end of World War II, he tells his fellow inmates news from the outside. His stories are lies, but they fill the community with hope.
As with any good fabrication, they contain an element of truth. During a chance visit to a Gestapo office, he hears a news broadcast. The Russians are pushing the Nazi troops back and are only 400 kilometers from the city.
When he tells a friend, the news spreads like wildfire throughout the ghetto. In the true form of gossip, the story is embellished. Everyone believes Jakob has a secret radio, an act punishable by death. He sees the effect of the good news on morale and continues to relay news, but now it's all made up.
It works. The lies create faith. There are no more suicides because rescue is just around the corner.
Some aspects of the film are well-crafted. The desperation of the people is apparent as they are subjected to the cruelty of slave labor, starvation, public hangings and isolation. The cinematography is claustrophobic and you feel the limited existence in the ghetto.
As real as some of the film is, it is never engaging. The horrors of the Holocaust are there, but the story is not.
In order for illusion to work, it has to be invisible. By their nature, movies are manipulative. Everything you see is designed to make you feel or believe something. The best films do it without the audience even noticing. Unseen smoke and mirrors.
When you see the emotional trickery, it doesn't work. That's the problem here.
During the opening credits, Jakob is running down the street chasing a page from a newspaper blowing in the wind. But not only isn't it real, it doesn't even look real. The paper isn't being blown by the wind, it's pulled by an unseen cinematic string -- or it's stuck on the screen by a computer.
And it continues. We can see the artifice. An about-to-be-orphaned little girl escapes a prisoner train as it moves through town and Jakob takes her in. The doe-eyed child is convincing as a real person, but never explored. Her primary function is to remind us that children suffer and we should feel sympathy. It's too blatant to be effective.
It almost goes without saying that Williams turns in an outstanding performance. Even in his less satisfying films, he's at least adequate. In the better ones, he's remarkable.
Somehow his role feels like a betrayal. There are any number of actors that could have done this role as well as he does. But there is only one Robin Williams and what he can do is unique and wonderful. He doesn't do it here.
Although we don't need to blindly accept all the lies around us, some of our illusions serve us well and allow us to continue. The ones we pay money for should be more convincing.
(Michael Redman has been writing this column for a very long time. His illusion is that he doesn't have any. Email your lies to Redman@indepen.com.)
[This appeared in the 9/30/99 "Bloomington Independent", Bloomington, Indiana. Michael Redman can be contacted at Redman@indepen.com.]
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