Described as "the English language version of Life is Beautiful," the Holocaust is brought to the screen once again, this time with Robin Williams starring as the title's protagonist, Jakob. "Jakob the Liar" is set in a Nazi-occupied ghetto in Poland during World War II.
As with Roberto Benigni's tragicomic concentration camp clown, Williams' Jakob brings a poignant humor and hope to a desolate and hopeless situation.
Jakob Heym, despairing owner of a long-closed café, is summoned to Gestapo headquarters one night for some supposed infraction. He manages to leave the headquarters unharmed, but on his way home he overhears a forbidden radio broadcast telling of Soviet military successes against German forces in a Polish town just 400 kilometers away. This is 1944, and it is the first news Jakob has heard of the war in years. The Russian liberation must be near!
Cheered by this news, he tells his ex-boxer friend, Mischa, Liev Schreiber, who draws from this information that Jakob must have an illegal radio – an offense punishable by death. From this simple misunderstanding, springs the story, as Mischa tells his friends of Jakob's news.
Jakob, seeing that this news has brought so much hope to the ghetto, becomes inspired. He soon takes to outright lying about what he gleans from his imaginary radio broadcasts. He spreads good stories, "taken from the BBC," about victorious Allies' battles with German troops.
As the good news secretly spreads, spirits are lifted, the suicide rate drops and hope is reborn in the desperate ghetto inhabitants. All of this is accomplished with Williams' inimitable humor, which is put to much better use than in his too often saccharine performance in Patch Adams.
This is the Williams performing up to Dead Poet's Society standards. It is the story of the truly amazing things than can happen when hope is awakened.
However, all good things must come to an end and, inevitably, the Germans hear of Jakob's secret radio, and begin a search for the resistance hero who operates it.
The movie is based on a 1969 novel by the same name written by Holocaust survivor Jurek Becker. It was made into a German film in 1974. Becker died in 1997, just before the current adaptation went into production.
The drama/comedy was directed by Peter Kassovitz and is rate PG for violence and disturbing images.
It is playing at Market Square East starting Thursday.