This will include ***SPOILERS***, but take my advice now and don't ever see this movie. Jakob the Liar is based on the Jurek Becker novel "Jakob, der Lügner" (the same title, but in German). The 1975 film with an untranslated and identical title was the first film adaptation and actually the original idea for the text. The East German film production companies at the time would not make the movie, so Becker wrote a novel. The novel was published in both Germanies at the same time and was huge, so the movie idea became a reality and was also published in both Germanies at the same time. Stick with the originals on this, please, I cannot stress this enough.
The 1999 Jakob the Liar is an affront to the memory of the Holocaust. This COMEDY focuses around the character of Jakob, a Jewish café owner who now lives in an unnamed Jewish ghetto in Poland, about 400km southwest of Bezanika. Jakob is portrayed by Robin Williams, who, of late, has tried to shift the stereotype of his quite length string of goofy comedies to more serious roles (Patch Adams, Insomnia, One Hour Photo, etc.). It brings me no pleasure to say that he fails in this film. His goofy smile, jokes in pitiful context, and even some work with crazy voices all seem immensely out of place. The film is about bringing hope to the hopeless and doomed to die, not about bringing an occasional laugh to a viewer who couldn't bear to actually take a movie seriously.
Apart from the many pointless changes in this movie from the original film, there are quite a number of rather detracting changes that succeed only in making the whole tale much more unbelievable. Max Frankfurter (Felix in the original) seems to have kept a sizeable portion of wealth with him while most of the city fell into absolute squalor. In addition to hiding a radio (as he did in the original), he also has a working German revolver as a prop he used in his days as an actor, but he also has hidden a fine chess set (checkers in the original) and what appears to be a couple of sets of china and crystal. Professor Kirchbaum (just Professor originally) also has a rather large and well-decorated home (for the ghetto), and has managed to hang on to some medicine, a large set of crystalware, and a bottle of fine brandy. Jakob himself--while he doesn't have a radio--has managed to keep a turntable in pristine condition down in his café. Apparently, in this ghetto, the Nazis didn't even bother opening a closet to confiscate contraband from the imprisoned Jews.
Comical music plays every time the Jews are lined up to be fed, and they apparently dance around in line under orders before eating. Either this is some bizarre Nazi custom that has simply never before been addressed, or it just makes no sense whatsoever. Jakob's friend Kowalski also seems to have a wonderful time giving Jakob his free shave every day, regardless of any work that he or anyone else at his shop might have to do. Work days in the ghetto weren't exactly short, and didn't leave one happy and ready to go play.
During one work day, Herschel (Herschel Schtamm in the original) is shot for talking to whomever is imprisoned in the train. In the original, he sneaks up behind the car and the rest of the Jews carry on work to avoid suspicion. In this new version, the entire freaking work crew steps up and stares at Herschel as he makes a break to tell news to the train prisoners. Way to work together.
In the original, Jakob tells Mischa about the radio so that Mischa will not try to steal potatoes and get himself killed before even reaching the crates. He only speaks of news later in passing, and even then very rarely. In the new version, Jakob indulges the lies, making them grand and ridiculous. Yes, this plays on the peoples' need to hope, but it also makes the news much more comical and out-of-place.
Jakob finds Lina outside the walls, and insists on sneaking back in instead of chancing it outside. They had a better chance of living if they were out, as all ghettos were eventually liquidated; they were fortunate to have lasted until 1944. They sneak back in through a hole in the fence. If they knew about such an easy way to escape, why not tell people so that at least some could flee? In any case, it was more real than the radio.
In this film, Jakob is tortured and martyred, refusing to destroy the hopes of the ghetto prisoners. The Nazis could easily have shot him sooner, but they first attempted to break the morale of a ghetto that was going to be shipped off to the death camps in less than twenty-four hours anyway. How brilliant. The prisoners are then loaded onto the train and shipped off, only to be saved 50km outside of town by a Russian tank division who, for some reason, had a small band traveling with them (the accordion and accompaniment, not the dream sequence). What a nice and happy and TOTALLY UNREALISTIC ending to a comical movie about the Holocaust. In the original, Jakob, Lina, Mischa, Rosa, and everybody else are all shipped off in the trains and the film fades to black. Any ideas about a Russian division saving them are simply naïve. They all died, and that was the reality of life in the ghetto. Jurek Becker (the author, remember) spent eight years in the camps himself. He survived, but he wasn't part of any majority. It wasn't an unlucky few that were gassed and incinerated; it was six million people, and that was just the Jews. That's like killing everyone in the state of Washington and then making a movie about an entire city that survived by some random stroke of luck. It didn't happen that way, and that's not how it should be remembered. Hollywood needs to open its eyes if it thinks that this is any kind of representation of the Holocaust.
1/10 It might deserve more as a solitary film without any context at all, but this is a movie about the Holocaust. Disgusting.
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