Director, Edward Zwick, starring: Daniel Craig (Tuvia Bielski), Liev Schreiber (Zus), Jamie Bell (Asael), 2 hours, 9 minutes, R for violence, 2008.

Religious symbolism drops with the subtlety of an anvil in this story based on the book "Defiance: The Bielski Partisans" by Nechema Tec. It is a true story of three Jewish brothers living in the Stankenich region of Poland, now Belarus. In 1941, the two older brothers return to their family farm to discover their parents betrayed by collaborators and murdered by Nazis. A sympathetic neighbour has hid their youngest brother Asael. Together, they take to the woods to hide out but over time other groups of refugees join them until they become a desperate band of about 1,000 living in the forest and surviving by stealing from collaborators, raiding the Nazi camps and receiving assistance from sympathetic farmers.

The tension in the story revolves around the two older brothers. For Tuvia, the issue is the survival of their humanity; of not becoming murderous like their Nazi oppressors and the collaborators. For Zus, the issue is "direct action" to avenge the deaths of his parents and to defeat the evil force of Nazi anti-Semitism. He argues that taking on all the refugees will slow them down. Eventually he joins a group of Belarus partisans supported by the Russian army, who engage in direct battles with the German army. Tuvia, meanwhile, continues to build a community in the wilderness. He even lays down some rules for their cooperative life together. There are not 10 of them but the symbolism cannot be missed.

Essentially, the brothers are Moses and Aaron and there is even a huge swamp that needs to be crossed in order to escape the pursuing German army. Zus, like Peter, argues that there is not enough bread in that deserted place to feed so many people "so send them away." This grim story is lightened by a continuous argument between a canny rabbi and a socialist intellectual who must adapt their bookish knowledge to the rigours of living rough in the woods. In Christian terms, Tuvia is a Christ figure but in the reality of survival in the woods and survival of his vision of a continuing community, he is flawed. On the one hand he argues for not becoming inhuman “like THEM” and avenges the death of his parents by saving others but on the other he wreaks vengeance directly on those who betrayed his parents. He is capable of extreme violence, particularly when a rival threatens the cooperative values of the fragile community. He lays down rules about fraternizing ("no pregnancy. We cannot afford a pregnancy") yet he himself, despite his taciturn resistance, cannot avoid falling in love.

Somewhat like the biblical Job, things work out well in the end. After the war, the two surviving brothers marry their sweethearts and start a trucking company in New York! The movie is long but it is still a gripping story that finely etches the moral dilemmas inherent in real human life under extreme pressure. In this sense it follows the notions of "Answering Theology" found in the writings of Paul Tillich. Life does not neatly follow The Bible but rather, The Bible follows life. The questions that arise in the human situation have their response in scripture. The story of The Exodus, the forming of the spiritual community in Jesus, gives meaning and energy to the resistance of Evil and the search for peace.