A film review by Mark O'Hara Copyright © 1999 Mark O'Hara

I don't get it. Why all the comparisons between "Jakob the Liar" and "Life is Beautiful" when the similarities are superficial?

Benigni's "Life" is a fable full of exaggeration; "Jakob" is a morality play set in a sordidly real ghetto. Yes, both settings are Holocaust Europe, and each contains a child under protective secrecy. That's about it.

Another "it" I don't get is why Robin Williams? Did director Peter Kassovitz feel assured of success when he landed such a popular American actor? Now I like Williams as a comedian, and many of his performances have been top-notch. And, his face is starting to age enough to qualify as the mug of a real character actor. BUT - his performance lacks either the scenes or the passion to qualify it as moving.

Jakob is a former maker of latkas and blintzes: his abandoned café is now the basement of his living quarters. Jakob's wife was murdered by the Nazis, and Jakob now works in a detail of other Polish Jews imprisoned within their formerly comfortable neighborhood. When Jakob, chasing down a stray sheet of paper to obtain any trace of news, wanders into a forbidden zone, he is sent to be punished. From a German officer's radio Jakob hears news of Russian troops just 400 kilometers away. Luckily Jakob makes it out of the office unscathed, but has to sneak home after curfew. It is now that he is obliged to care for a girl - Lina, played by Hannah Taylor-Gordon -- who has escaped a train headed for a concentration camp.

All these details create a grim tone, but the capacity for hope arises when Jakob saves his friend Kowalsky (Bob Balaban) from suicide with news of the Russian advance. Is the war almost over? is the question countless people are soon asking Jakob. Believing Jakob has a forbidden radio, the men of the ghetto are soon pestering him for the latest news - hopefully of the impending German defeat. Jakob soon finds himself creating outlandish stories about American tanks and jazz bands, Russian divisions and planes. In short, he is a liar. But doesn't spreading hope justify lying? Not necessarily, Jakob sees when a neighbor perishes in his own attempt to spread the news he obtained through Jakob.

As you might expect, the atmosphere of the film is stark. The set decoration is marvelous, suggesting the long period of desperation that ghetto dwellers must have experienced. The characters are careworn, as are their shops and streets and infrastructure. The viewer in turn feels a mood of claustrophobia and darkness, a mood very fitting for the plot.

The acting helps to make "Jakob the Liar" a solid enough story. Alan Arkin plays Frankfurter, the former actor and current doubter of the value of the radio. As Mischa the former boxer, Liev Schreiber turns in a strong performance; he sketches Mischa with a big heart but loose lips. Michael Jeter (Avron) delivers his lines well, but is woefully underused, his comic genius not evoked once. A similar problem surfaces with much of Williams' performance. Indeed he is turned loose only once, during a scene I think is the film's best. When he can no longer put Lina off about listening to the fictional radio, Jakob creates an amazing broadcast, followed by a life-affirming dance about the vacant café. In the end, though, Williams seems cornered by a wrong-headed conclusion.

The crux of the problem is the commonplace. Perhaps Peter Kassovitz failed to recognize the need for more scenes like the dance. I'm not talking about dips into farce as we see in "Life Is Beautiful." I mean just a few more scenes that would endear the characters to us to a greater degree. We see enough of the ordinary and bleak. After all, the ending takes a dip into magical realism, but is ultimately unsupported by the elements of foreshadowing and fantasy that would properly ready us. The bug is in the storytelling, then.

Hope is a thing worth many sacrifices, is one of the main messages we understand from the film. When these souls get back to their former lives, it will be because they hoped they would. It's certainly an important theme. It's just not full of enough humor, even carefully-wrought dark humor - to make "Jakob the Liar" an important film.

	Running Time: 114 Min | Rated PG-13 | US Release: Sept. 24th | More >>

Related 'Jakob the Liar' Links:

• Official Site
• Jakob the Liar Site
• Star Seeker Movies: Jakob the Liar
• Upcomingmovies.com: Jakob the Liar

When all hope was lost, he invented it.