Jakob the Liar . Tucson Weekly . 10-11-99

Jakob the Liar

DIRECTED BY: Peter Kassovitz

REVIEWED: 10-11-99

Set in an occupied Polish ghetto in 1944, Jakob is the story of an unremarkable Jewish man (with his self-avowed "greatest achievement in life [being] an apricot latke") who becomes an unwitting, and mostly unwilling, hero to the desperate and increasingly hopeless people of his neighborhood. Under the Nazis, Jews were forbidden access to news, and owning a radio was an offense -- like most offenses -- punishable by death. So when Jakob (Robin Williams) reveals a scrap of news overheard on a Nazi radio -- that the Russians are only 400 km away (humanely neglecting to mention they were reportedly defeated by the German army -- his story is repeated and exaggerated until he himself is rumored to have direct access to the BBC, and to be fomenting a resistance. The more he tells the truth (that he has no radio), the more his friends and neighbors (and eventually the Germans) think he is lying; until making up increasingly intricate lies becomes the only salvation in a reality gone unbelievably wrong. Jakob is a well-acted and bittersweet tale of human tragedy, and its message of the devastating consequences of racism is clear: as these stories come to light, we ought also to consider that for more than 50 years now, the only image of the German people perpetuated on American television and film continues to be that of the Nazi.

--Mari Wadsworth

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