Opens September 24, 1999

A Holocaust comedy? Yes, on some level, that is what Jakob the Liar aspires to be, with no disrespect meant to the hideous era that provides its backdrop. Despite being a remake of the Silver Bear winner at the 1974 Berlin Film Festival, which itself was based upon Jurek Becker's international best-seller, Jakob the Liar seems to have lost something in the translation. Ultimately, the film proves to be neither comic nor dramatic enough to engage the audience, afraid to make light of the situation in the Polish ghetto lest it seem insensitive to the atrocities it dances around.

Like its Oscar-nominated double Life Is Beautiful, this film sends the message that hope and humor can save the soul even in the darkest times. Here, hope comes in the form of the title character Jakob Heym. As portrayed by Robin Williams, Jakob is a timid, lost soul who still has conversations with his dead wife while struggling to maintain a semblance of normalcy in the shadow of the Nazi occupation. Jakob's odyssey begins accidentally, after he stays out beyond curfew and is remanded to the German commandant's office. There, he overhears news on the radio that the Russians have arrived in a town less than four hundred kilometers distant from the ghetto walls. Freedom, he thinks, must be soon at hand.

Consumed with hope, he races home, only to discover Lina (Hannah Taylor-Gordon), a little girl who has escaped one of the concentration camp trains. Ever the good soul and perhaps yearning for the children he and his wife never had, Jakob hides Lina in his home and treats her as his own. The next day, while working at the train yard unloading boxes, Jakob finds his friend Mischa (Liev Schreiber) trying to make a hole in one of the train cars so Jews on their way to the camps will be able to escape. Don't take these unnecessary risks, implores Jakob. After all, the Russians are coming. Russians? How could Jakob know? When Mischa presses him, he says that he heard it on the radio.

Jakob's fate is sealed. Mischa is convinced that his friend is hiding a radio, something forbidden to the Jews, and Jakob is hard-pressed to deny it after he sees the joy in his friend's face. All Jakob can ask is that Mischa keep his secret, but, by the next day, everyone in the ghetto knows about Jakob's treasure and he is treated almost like a God. Thus starts Jakob's spiral downward. He tries to avoids the situation, he denies that he has a radio; he begs people to leave him alone.

Yet, he can't deny the change that has come over his friends. For the first time, there is a light-heartedness to these people, people who have given up all hope and resigned themselves to a slow, spiritual and perhaps physical death. Only one person seems to see through Jakob's charade, and that is Dr. Kirschbaum (Armin Mueller-Stahl). But, as he says, suicide rates are down and hope is in the air. What can a little lie hurt? So, Jakob begins to embrace his role as jester in a charade of lies about the war.

Here, however, is where the story falls apart. Unlike Begnini's hero in Life Is Beautiful, Jakob fails to embrace his duty wholeheartedly. Jakob's lies are always a struggle; indeed, some of them are so awkward that it's remarkable no one catches on. One could say that these ghetto survivors are so hungry for news that they will believe anything, but as an audience, it is difficult to experience the same awakening as Jakob's friends. This is because, except for one brief moment at the end of the film, his lies lack the vivid energy and fanciful yearning they should have, especially given the way his words seem to rejuvenate his soul sick community.

The humor is strained at best, competing with the drama, which tends toward the maudlin. It is as if director Peter Kassovitz felt that to indulge the whimsy of these situations too much would disgrace the horror from which they spring, and ultimately, the film gets a little long in the tooth because the story never takes us to the next level. Despite some outstanding performances from the ensemble, which also includes Alan Arkin and Bob Balaban, scenes start feeling repetitive and many story lines, like Lina's, fail to go anywhere. Except for their hopefulness, characters fail to evolve. Even in the climatic -- and predictable -- closing moments, the hero's actions feel hollow, only noble in the most manipulative sense.

Robin Williams gives a necessarily restrained performance, except for one bit where he performs an entire fake radio broadcast for an unsuspecting Lina. Still, part of the fault for the film's lackluster quality lies with Williams himself, whose character is the center piece of the story yet lacks the usual dynamism the actor is known for. While this may have been a conscious choice, it seems more likely to stem from a fear of being too light-hearted when in fact that is exactly the contrast this material calls for.

Most of the film's emptiness, however, lies in the stoic direction of Kassovitz, whose script (co-written with Didier Decoin), lacks the imagination and elegance needed to bring the story's themes and deeper emotions to life. Instead of lyricism, we are given restrained wit. Rather than tragedy, we are given melodrama. In the end, Jakob the Liar is neither comic nor tragic, riding the fence of ambiguity and sending a message that is more pedantic than illuminating.