The feature film “Résistance” is reminiscent of the resistance fighter Marcel Marceau – but it doesn’t do him justice
It was Charlie Chaplin who, with his film “The Great Dictator”, created perhaps the most powerful counter-image to Hitler. The effect was immense. Nazi Germany reacted by banning all Hollywood films, and internationally the tragic comedy became an icon of the resistance.
At the beginning of the lavish historical drama “Resistance” you see a young man imitating Chaplin. In this biopic, Jesse Eisenberg plays the pantomime Marcel Marceau, who earned his first spurs in Strasbourg cabarets around 1938. At that time, the later world-famous artist was 17 years old, Eisenberg is 38 today. It is a strange cast idea that does not become more understandable during the two hours of running.
The performance of the teenager does not meet with unanimous approval. Angry, his father, a Jewish butcher, storms him. How dare he portray Hitler as a clown, especially in a brothel. Could there really have been people in the western world back then who did not recognize a Chaplin imitation? After all, we are two years ahead of the “Great Dictator,” and the subject of the pantomime is clearly the most famous film actor on the planet.
The father would have hit one point with his criticism: Without costume and just working on Eisenberg’s pantomime, the master of silent film comedy would really not have been able to be identified in this performance. Rarely has one seen an actor who can do as little with a role as Eisenberg. This is all the more astonishing as he has almost always been convincing since his breakthrough as Mark Zuckerberg in “The Social Network”. But he’s not the only one who messed up on this film.
Filmmaker Jonathan Jakubowicz has a big story to tell, but he doesn’t quite seem to trust her himself. Even before the flashback story begins, an American officer sums it up in flaming words during a troop conversation. The young artist, who will shortly be entertaining the soldiers, is a great hero of the resistance.
Indeed, Marcel Marceau’s youth biography has definitely deserved a film. With an almost unbelievable fearlessness, the teenager became involved in the Resistance, initially as a passport forger. Born Marcel Mangel also gave himself a new name, later he kept it as a memory. Then he succeeded in three actions to bring more than a thousand Jewish orphans to Switzerland and thus to save them. Silence may be a mime’s greatest virtue, but more should have been said about this artist’s heroism.
Perhaps it is difficult to pack such extraordinary courage into a conventional film plot. But why not try it? Unfortunately, there is a tendency towards over-motivation in formulaic entertainment films. It is not enough that people can surpass themselves and work miracles in the process. First of all, a love story has to be found here so that the young man can impress his girlfriend, who is already active in the resistance.
Second, a larger-than-life villain has to be found to face in a fateful encounter. Matthias Schweighöfer embodies Gestapo chief Klaus Barbie, the “butcher of Lyon”, outwardly idealized as a dashing Nazi officer. The cruelty of which he was capable of his sadistic tortures and murders must have been limitless. However, letting him casually hit a few piano keys before being shot seems frivolous in this staging, trimmed for dark Nazi elegance. In addition, he is attested to have a sense of art that tempts him to start a conversation with the pantomime. He wants to know how he can manage to interest his daughter in art. “You should exert less pressure,” he gets in reply – and you don’t really know whether you should laugh or cry at this tasteless dialogue.
Is extraordinary heroism, as demonstrated by Marcel Marceau, really so difficult to grasp that one has to create a comic artificiality around it? The whole arsenal of cheap scenery was once again put into this international co-production, historically poorly prepared locations over-decorated with Nazi flags.
Maybe things could have turned out worse. Halfway through, the film gets stuck trying to rehearse Eisenberg’s lack of talent as a pantomime. The script actually calls for it. Marcel Marceau succeeded again and again in his rescue operations to entertain the traumatized children with his performances. What dramaturgical possibilities would have existed in this film if any of the participants had had a weakness for Marcel Marceau’s art?
Should it really be the case that the artist who died in 2007 produced an infinite number of imitators but no successors? Instead, dramatic escape scenes are reeled out over night mountain landscapes, in which little can be recognized, but intrusive symphonic film music has to be endured.
Marcel Marceau was a poet of simplicity. It took him decades to make his own traumas into subjects of his art. This film understood nothing of his art and his wonderful life. This man had to save himself from life-threatening situations again and again with his mimic skills. His father, here an unworthy marginal figure, was murdered in Auschwitz. Nonetheless, he was passionate about conveying his art, especially on German stages. The best thing to do is to forget this film quickly. What a story to discover with this life of talented filmmakers.
Resistance. GB / F / D / USA 2020. Regie: Jonathan Jakubovicz. 122 Min.
