# Jakob the Liar (1999)

### reviewed by
Stephen Graham Jones

    Jakob the Liar: true lies

In a Holocaust movie the question is never Is the hammer going to fall, but When is the hammer going to fall. And who's going to live through razing the ghetto. Who's going on the train. Before we even sit down to Jakob the Liar, we already expect these questions to be answered. It's not all about convention, however: we also expect to appreciate dignity, perseverance, humility, sacrifice, the whole gamut of things that made us cry at Schindler's List. And of course, as a bonus, we get to hate the Nazis some more. The Holocaust movie is one of the last remaining places where good and evil can be so clearly demarcated without compromising the integrity of things, one of the last settings where a black hat unequivocally means 'bad,' a white, 'good.'

In Jakob the Liar, Jakob Heym (Robin Williams)--self-proclaimed part-time Jew--wears the whitest hat of all. As for story arc, too, it's a lot like Braveheart, just without all the epic patriotism. Patriotism is, after all, land-related, and the Jewish community of Jakob the Liar is by definition landless. But still, Jakob does more or less organize the resistance, his wife is already dead (Fisher King?), and there is a torture scene towards the end. And, people are affecting accents off an on, though it never gets so careless as Costner's Robin Hood.

It all starts rather thematically, per Forrest Gump, with a simpled-down man and something floating on the wind. In Jakob the Liar, it's a newspaper. And Jakob's chasing it, shadow-playing things to come: how one errant word from him will snowball out of control, thrust this pancake vendor into the role of a prophet, in a time when prophet is defined as he-who-has-news of the war. The thing is, though--as Jakob chasing the newspaper establishes--Jakob doesn't have the news. His 'radio' is a desperate figment of a collective imagination. Which is where the Liar part comes into play. Accurate or make-believe, news for the Jewish community engenders hope, and hope is rare. So, by piling lie on lie, each more fantastic than the last, Jakob can keep his (all-star) community afloat awhile longer.

But of course making light of a bad situation can only last so long. In spite of the welcome humor and Fiddler on the Roof music, this is a Holocaust movie. Sombre is a word. Inevitable's another. The first spoken word, is, after all, "Hitler," and every exchange after is, though often comical, nevertheless weighted, simply by the fact that this parting could be the last parting. What's particularly effective with all this, too, is how director/writer Peter Kassovitz subtly manages to put us in the same position as the Jewish community, via cleverly keeping the timeline from us, which serves to nullify the dramatic irony that would have otherwise been operant. In spite of the history lessons complete with dates, we, like the Jews, have no idea when this is all going to be over. Meaning that for some tense moments at the end Jakob the Liar sways between tragedy and comedy, and doesn't commit itself either way until the closing frames, and even then--as with The French Lieutenant's Woman--it tries to get the best of both worlds, both endings. Because it's Robin Williams, too, it does.

    (c) 1999 Stephen Graham Jones

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