Mark Reviews Movies: RESISTANCE (2020)

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Review by Mark Dujsik | March 26, 2020

If people remember the late Marcel Marceau, it's for his career as a mime. The art of pantomime, of course, long has been the butt of many jokes, so knowledge of Marceau's fame has dwindled since the height of his world-wide popularity in the 1950s and '60s (He was recognizable enough by the 1970s that Mel Brooks gave the only spoken word of dialogue to the mime for a joke in his Silent Movie—a great gag, that, by the way).

Marceau, though, had an entirely different life before that fame. He tried to make a career for himself as an actor in the late 1930s in Strasbourg, France, and that's where and when the story of Resistance begins. The Nazis have firmly secured power in Germany. Adolf Hitler's eyes are trained on the country's European neighbors. Jews and others whom the Nazis have deemed "undesirable" to their nation and the furtherance of their worldview are being moved, detained, and murdered.

At first, none of this matters to the movie's version of Marcel, played by Jesse Eisenberg. He technically is too old for the role of Marceau as a teenager and in his early 20s, but the movie is more focused on the evolution of the character as a source of inspiration than on how much a young person is willing to sacrifice in the midst of such devastation. Here, Marcel begins as a selfish dreamer, unmoved by the plight of Jews in Germany, until a group of orphans arrives in Strasbourg—their parents having been detained or killed.

The story gradually reveals itself to be only partially about Marceau, since he is just one of many faces among a group of scouts and, later, French Resistance fighters, working to shelter and save children from the encroaching power of the Nazis and, then, to take the fight to the invaders in occupied Lyon. This isn't necessarily a slight against the movie, written and directed by Jonathan Jakubowicz, although it is a bit odd. The opening prologue features Gen. George S. Patton (Ed Harris) addressing a group of soldiers in liberated Paris, promising them the story of one man's distinct courage.

This framing device could be seen as a bit deceptive, but there's something to the fact that, while the story following the prologue begins and ends with the man who will become a famous mime, Marceau's courage here is no greater and no lesser than any of the other characters involved in the work for the orphans and the fighting with the Resistance. While the movie may initially present itself as a biography of Marceau, its narrative encompasses more than that.

There's another side to that, though. In losing its focus on the central character, though, the movie also does fall into an unfortunately familiar routine.

At the start, it's all about Marcel, who is Jewish (He changes his last name from Mangel after the occupation of France), performing at night in a local cabaret and working during the day at the butcher shop owned by his father Charles (Karl Markovics), who disapproves of his son's dream to become an actor, but not in an overbearing way. Marcel's cousin Georges (Géza Röhrig) is involved in the effort to rescue Jewish orphans from Germany, and so, too, is Emma (Clémence Poésy), for whom Marcel has romantic intentions. Marcel's brother Alain (Félix Moati) joins later.

When the children—including Elsbeth (Bella Ramsey), whose parents are murdered in front of her by the Nazis—arrive, Marcel entertains them with pantomime. As the Nazis begin to invade and conquer other countries, he teaches the children how to hide using the skills he has honed as an actor. He also discovers a talent for forging passports.

As Marcel and his comrades are forced to move and find new homes for the orphans, Jakubowicz provides the necessary historical context with on-screen titles. The next section of the story follows Marcel, Alain Emma, and her sister Mila (Vica Kerekes) as they join the Resistance, trying to evade detection by Klaus Barbie (Matthias Shweighöfer), the leader of the local SS who have set up headquarters at Lyon hotel, where the Nazi takes sickening pleasure in executing and torturing people.

The screenplay moves freely between three groups—Marcel, Emma and Mila, and Klaus and his thugs—to establish this tale of courage, sacrifice, and, in those scenes at the hotel (where Klaus executes people, between sips of liquor and measures of music at a piano, and explains flaying, his preferred method of torture), horror. It's admirable that Jakubowicz attempts to illuminate as much as he does here. With that, though, comes an intrinsic degree of narrative inconsistency (One sequence, which details two of Marcel's friends being tortured by Klaus, is so horrific that it makes Marcel's story seem wholly insignificant in the bigger picture) and formula (Klaus becomes nothing more than a pursuing villain during the third act).

Marceau's pre-fame story is obviously worth the telling, and even though this isn't exclusively a telling of that particular story, we can understand and appreciate Jakubowicz's rationale for expanding the movie's scope. In the end, though, Resistance comes across as just muddled in purpose and unfocused in narrative enough to undermine its initial and ultimate goal. It makes Marceau a supporting player in his own story too often.

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