Movie Review: ‘Resistance’ Is Unbearable

Marcel Marceau was the most renowned mime on earth when he died in 2007, but long before that, during the war, he joined the French Resistance and helped some French Jewish children slip over the border to Switzerland. The movie about this, boringly called Resistance, combines clowning under Nazi rule with Alpine escape, so it’s Life Is Beautiful meets The Sound of Music. So call it Life Is Beautiful, Even If There’s a Mime Present. Or maybe The Sound of Mime.

Resistance (which is offered via video-on-demand services) successfully channels the spirit of mime in that it is completely unbearable. The more light-hearted it tries to be, the more anvil-like it is, and the more sobering it tries to be, the funnier it is. It went awry at an early stage: When the middle-aged actor Jesse Eisenberg was hired to play 15-year-old Marceau. Eisenberg is a reliable screen performer, but the spectrum of roles for which he is suited is about as wide as a balance beam. He’s not capable of playing a character terribly different from himself, so he’s fine playing an affectless New Yorker born in the Eighties, but he can’t do anything to alter his voice or his general manner meaningfully. His French accent is questionable. As a mime, he looks like somebody imitating a mime.

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Kyle Smith

Kyle Smith is the film critic for the Wall Street Journal.

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Marcel Marceau was the most renowned mime on earth when he died in 2007, but long before that, during the war, he joined the French Resistance and helped some French Jewish children slip over the border to Switzerland. The movie about this, boringly called Resistance, combines clowning under Nazi rule with Alpine escape, so it’s Life Is Beautiful meets The Sound of Music. So call it Life Is Beautiful, Even If There’s a Mime Present. Or maybe The Sound of Mime.

Resistance (which is offered via video-on-demand services) successfully channels the spirit of mime in that it is completely unbearable. The more light-hearted it tries to be, the more anvil-like it is, and the more sobering it tries to be, the funnier it is. It went awry at an early stage: When the middle-aged actor Jesse Eisenberg was hired to play 15-year-old Marceau. Eisenberg is a reliable screen performer, but the spectrum of roles for which he is suited is about as wide as a balance beam. He’s not capable of playing a character terribly different from himself, so he’s fine playing an affectless New Yorker born in the Eighties, but he can’t do anything to alter his voice or his general manner meaningfully. His French accent is questionable. As a mime, he looks like somebody imitating a mime.