Uprising (2001)

Terrible acting, screenplay and direction.

Self-important, over-dramatic, uninspired.

Story: It's very simple but honestly that is fine.

The movie really just wants to entertain people.

Poland surrenders to Germany in 1939. Jews are forced into the Warsaw ghetto. Adam Czerniakow (Donald Sutherland) is the head of the Jewish counsel and Kazik Rotem (Stephen Moyer) is his driver. Tosia Altman (Leelee Sobieski) is able to pass for Aryan and sneaks out to trade for food. Mordechai Anielewicz (Hank Azaria) fails to escape to Palestine and decides to stay for the fight. Yitzhak Zuckerman (David Schwimmer) is his best friend and Zivia Lubetkin (Sadie Frost) is his girlfriend. Calel Wasser is a Jewish policeman in the ghetto. Czerniakow struggles to save lives in the impossible position and Anielewicz berates him for co-operating. As Jews are deported to Treblinka, Czerniakow commits suicide and Anielewicz organizes the resistance. Dr. Fritz Hippler (Cary Elwes) is a German propagandist who made "The Eternal Jew". Major-General Jurgen Stroop (Jon Voight) takes over the operation to clear out the ghetto.This is quite a production for network TV. It's very high quality. There are a couple of questionable scenes where accuracy is concerned. There are some top-notched actors led by the great Donald Sutherland. I could probably do without Schwimmer. Still, it's great for what it is.

In 1939, after the invasion of Poland, Reinhard Heydrich chief of Gestapo began to place all Polish Jews in ghettos, where they could slowly die of hunger and disease. The campaign was to be administered by the Waffen-SS the party's military formations that fought as integral units in the armed forces. The Warsaw ghetto was the largest of these segregated areas established by the Nazis in Poland. In 1940 Heydrich, using the excuse that the spread of typhus had to be contained, set up a special section 11 miles in circumference enclosed by a brick wall 10 feet high . The cost was paid by the Judenrat (whose leader named Adam Czerniakow is perfectly played by Donald Sutherland) , the Jewish Council of twenty-four-members, which was in charge of Jewish affairs inside the ghetto . The daily struggle against hunger and disease is aggravated by the German demands for "deportations to the east" that many begin to suspect are camouflaged mass murders . Later on , there takes place the upheaval by a handful of fighters .This is an emotionally tale and very decent drama about a group of Jews from uprising until terrible ending in the Warsaw ghetto . Jon Avnet correctly directs a spellbinding portrait about the holocaust with intense drama , action and spectacular as well as sad scenes . A splendid all-star-cast gives magnificent acting in real-life characters such as Leelee Sobieski as Tosia Altman , David Schwimmer as Yitzhak Zuckerman , Stephen Moyer as Kazik Rotem, Sadie Frost as Zivia Lubetkin , Radha Mitchell as Mira Fruchner , Mili Avital as Deworah Baron and special mention to Hanz Azaria who is excellent in a complicate and suffering role . An of course , we can not forget the great John Voight as Major-General Jurgen Stroop who carried out the brutal repression . Emotive as well as sensitive musical score by the classical Maurice Jarre . Impressive and adequate production by the Spanish Benjamin Fernandez who previously had designed ¨The others¨ and ¨Daylight¨ . Evocative and atmospheric cinematography by cameraman Denis Lenoir . Adding more details over largely described on the movie regarding 'the Warsaw ghetto uprising', the events happened on the following manner : From 300 to 400 died daily in the Warsaw trap. More than 43.000 starved to death during the first year. Children crazed by hunger crawled through the sewers to the non-Jewish sectors of the city to smuggle in a bit of food. People were no longer moved by the sight of men and women falling dead on the streets. The Nazi authorities began intensified measure on July 22, 1942. As a memorial to Heydrich, Heirich Himmler ordered all Jews except those already in concentration camps to be deported .The ghetto and all labor camps would then be destroyed. Mass deportations to the gas chambers of Treblinka began. In two months 300.000 Jews were eliminated. The Judenrat was ordered to deliver 6.000 Jews daily for deportation. Each day thousands were driven by guards through the gates.Young Zionists, pioneers training to go to Palestine, mobilized first to be followed by members of the Polish workers party . On July 28, 1942, the Jewish Combat organization consisting about 1.000 men and boys was formed. All resolved to kill as many of their tormentors as they could before they died.The Jews fighting from rooftops, cellars, and attics,Poles outside the ghetto now began to send in more revolvers, grenades, and dynamite. In 1943 the guerrillas divided into twenty-two groups built an intricate network underground cellars and tunnels ,linked with command posts . In April 19,1943 German troops moved in on the ghetto to send all who were left to Treblinka in a final action. First came the armed trucks, tanks, and armored cars. The ghetto fighters poured a hail of bullets, grenades and bombs, the fighting went on for twenty-eight days. The guerrillas fought to the last . Many committed suicide at the moment before capture. The Germans dragged survivors from the cellars and rubble. Fewer than 100 escaped, the last 60000 Jews had been exterminated or killed in the explosions and fires.Polish sources reported that the fighters had killed 300 Germans and wounded 1000. From Warsaw Jewish resistance moved to swamps and forests .

There are so many movies made in Hollywood with different themes and placed in many time periods. About wars, the mafia, about all kinds of events and situations. Regardless of genre, time and space, all movies are spoken in English. Whether it comes to discussions between the Russian mafia members, Chinese, whether it's a movie about Japanese, or as we're talking about world wars, the Hebrew, Polish, German soldiers. Whether you're talking about movies based on true events, with a character who goes from a concentration camp in Bulgaria, traverses many other countries and arrive in Norway (I am David). As Incultura in America, that a subtitled film would be a disaster to the public? Mel Gibson was claiming that the films he has directed to the language spoken in the area and referred to the action. original and daring. The remaining films, from this point of view, are a step behind. Americans not only know how to speak English. But to their surprise, in this world there are other people, other continents, countries, other people, other cultures, other languages. Only their quality is that there are many. Of curiosity, you know how many people do not know English?

I'm sorry to tell M. Adams that if he reads book written by fighters from the ghetto or see documentaries where they testify, he could learn that the Polish Resistance didn't really assist the ghetto fighters. Is that a point of history ? I don't know. I didn't made any research on that subject. But, these fighters who survived, as witnesses, said that in many works (books or videos) made on that subject. By the way, a lot of researchers pointed that the Polish were not the nicer people with Jews during that period, that could explain the low number of survivors, compared to other countries.Uprising can be seen as an epic movie on this resistance. A lot of images remind what we could see in every propaganda movie, specially Hollywood movies, making heroes of the characters. But, aren't they ?