Independent Films, Film Profiles

Jakob the Liar

Jakob the Liar is a 1999 drama film directed by Peter Kassovitz and starring Robin Williams, Alan Arkin, Liev Schreiber, Hannah Taylor-Gordon, and Bob Balaban.The movie is set in 1944 in a ghetto in Poland, in the times of the Holocaust. The movie is based on the book by Jurek Becker about World War II Jewish Ghetto life. It's also a remake of the German DEFA film from 1975.In 1944 Poland, a Jewish shop keeper named Jakob is summoned to ghetto headquarters after being falsely accused of being out after curfew. While waiting for the German Kommandant, Jakob overhears a German radio broadcast about Russian troop movements. Returned to the ghetto, the shopkeeper shares his information with a friend and then rumors fly that there is a secret radio within the ghetto. Jakob uses the chance to spread hope throughout the ghetto by continuing to tell favorable tales of information from "his secret radio". Jakob, however, has a real secret in that he is hiding a young Jewish girl who escaped from a camp transport train. These lies keep hope and humor alive among the ghetto inhabitants. The Germans learn of the mythical radio, however, and begin a search for the resistance hero who dares operate it.Kowalsky hangs himself after the confession. Jakob surrenders himself to the Germans as they demand the person with the radio give himself up or risk hostages being killed. During interrogation, Jacob told the army officer he met at the beginning of the film that he had only listened to the radio inside the headquarters. The army officer panicked, as allowing a Jew to hear a radio is a grave offense, and he requested that Jakob announce publicly that this was all a lie. Jakob is presented to the public but declines to say so, and is shot. As all the Jews are about to be deported, the Russians arrive in time to save them, as Jakob promised.The plot is slightly different in a few places from the book. Firstly, Lina is not present as Jakob's daughter from the beginning; instead, he meets her on his way home from the Gestapo station in the movie's beginning. Also, the news of the radio is first told to Kowalski, to prevent him from hanging himself in the barber's shop.