Film Review: Jesse Eisenberg’s Resistance is Sappily Hopeful
In this strange world, movies are going to take a more weighted meaning, while lightening people’s openness to them. I saw Resistance before Covid-19 went AWAL and then after. In seeing it twice, the meaning altered, and I felt even more softened to its very overt attempt to bring hope. Following the story of French mime Marcel Marceau and his role as a member of France’s Jewish Resistance against Nazi occupation, Jesse Eisenberg’s performance convinces you to feel the sincerity in, at times, its sappiness.
Written and directed by Jonathan Jakubowicz, Resistance takes place in WWII, and follows a Jewish Boy Scout turned mime, who became essential in saving the lives of thousands of orphans. In that premise, alone, you can find beauty and hope, which Jakubowicz tries to elaborate through his script several times. There is no emotional subtlety in this film when it comes to characters saying what they feel and think so bluntly. It can hit This Is Us levels of wanting to make you cry, which I welcome! Yet, I note this because human beings don’t, usually, have the words or will to be so sentimentally transparent, and then deliver intelligent, even poetic lines to “rile the troops” in the midst of running and hiding from shooting Nazis. This psychological fact leapt at me because some people don’t like a movie that is apparent in wanting you to FEEL for it. Moreover, technically, Marcel Marceau was 16 when he began saving and protecting French-Jewish children from Nazis.
RESISTANCE Official Trailer (2020) Jesse Eisenberg, Ed Harris Movie HD
Personally, I would have LOVED to see a teen play Marcel because the wonder of his story is that he was so astute, kind, and brave for being a kid in a deranged circumstance. He was a child saving children with dreams of being the next Charlie Chaplin. There is something so humbling about that truth, but Jesse Eisenberg DELIVERS as Marcel. He is compassionate, frenetic, sweet, and so out of his element he feels in it. He entertains children whose life, as they know it, has been destroyed and they are not FREE yet. Eisenberg is fantastic in fusing the natural, awkward charm he, usually, gives his characters, and helps the audience believe that Marcel could go from miming for children to Assassin’s Creed. In convincing viewers he IS Marcel Marceau, he becomes their emotional anchor and gives a powerful enough performance for us to pull for him and weave through, at times, the rough fluidity of the movie.
The film can go from cheesy, heartfelt interactions, especially between Marcel, the kids, or characters like, his “pixie dream girl” crush, Emma (Clemence Poesy) and passionate cousins Georges (Géza Röhrig), and then it leaps into Ichaotic action sequences that oddly capture the turmoil of these characters’ situations. Yet, the cuts are not always smoothly paced. Yet, that could have been part of Jakubowicz goal. WWII was a torrid part of history and, like the current pandemic, it was unprecedented in size, magnitude, shock, and sheer globality. There was no “proper pace” for its strange horror, which is why the story of Marcel Marceau is a great one to tell. In the midst of an evil never before seen, it is always motivating to see the story of someone who discovered a good in them that, otherwise, they might have never known. In essence, if the world hadn’t gotten so dark, Marcel Marceau, and many others, would have never known they were its light. Resistance comes out, on demand, on March 27.
