“The Age of Shadows” (2016)
Given that we’re thinking about “Allied,” and that it is the conflict most associated with the concept of organized underground resistance movements, it’s inevitable that the majority of the films here deal with WWII. But civilian resistance happens wherever there is occupation or opposition to a repressive regime, and the latest great entry into the canon from Asia (that also includes Ang Lee‘s heady 2007 erotic espionage thriller “Lust, Caution” and Choi Dong-hoon‘s 2015 hit “Assassination“) is Kim Jee-woon‘s intoxicatingly complex cat-and-mouse spy movie that premiered at the Venice Film Festival this year. A brilliantly crafted, beautifully shot film (from cinematographer Kim Ji-yong) the enjoyably convoluted, fast-moving story is set against the backdrop of the Korean independence struggle against occupying Japanese forces, as a group of resistance fighters attempt to smuggle explosives and black-market artifacts through enemy territory and to unmask the traitor in their ranks, while a Korean police captain (Song Kang-ho) now reluctantly working for the Japanese, tries to run them to ground. The thicket of betrayals and double-agent plotting is given real heft and pathos by Song’s perfectly sympathetic, conflicted anti-hero, and the filmmaking, in which set pieces nestle within set pieces like Russian dolls, is wildly impressive, making it perhaps not the deepest resistance film here, but definitely one of the most entertaining.
“The Battle Of Algiers” (1966)
There has never really been another film like Gillo Pontecorvo‘s masterpiece —its mix of radical politics, neo-realist influence, its Ennio Morricone score and guerrilla approach to depicting guerrilla warfare, with an almost entirely non-professional cast and a volume of background “extras” that puts “Gandhi” to shame, is a one-off feat unlikely to ever be replicated. But it’s not for any such academic reason that the film remains relevant: it is simply a timelessly electric piece of filmmaking that feels as furious today as it did in 1966, when it was banned in France. Released five years later, it became the subject of perhaps the most scathing Cahiers du Cinema critique ever, essentially claiming that a failure to outright condemn the film was tantamount to a failure of moral duty. With some distance from the Algerian War it portrays, the film can perhaps now be admired on other grounds, but there is no doubt that the impact of its towering spectacle has extended far beyond cinephile circles, with organizations from the IRA to the Black Panthers to the Baader-Meinhof group citing its influence. A jagged, jarringly docu-realist portrait of oppression meeting opposition resulting in complete societal breakdown following a broad cast of characters from across the spectrum, “The Battle of Algiers” is a political molotov cocktail and cinematic lightning in a bottle.
There are a huge number of other titles that easily could have vied for a slot on this list, especially when you consider that a lot of WWII spy movies can also be classed as resistance films on some level. There are classics like “The Guns of Navarone,” “Against the Wind,” “13 Rue Madeleine,” “Commandos Strike at Dawn,” “This Land is Mine” and even Hitchcock thrillers like “The Lady Vanishes” and Hitchcock-indebted films like “Night Train to Munich” sort of qualify, if you cast the net wider.
More recently, resistance plots have formed an integral if sometimes metaphorical or allegorical part of a lot of films from other genres, from the original “Star Wars” trilogy to “Logan’s Run” to “They Live” in sci-fi to “Pan’s Labyrinth” in fantasy, to “Red Dawn” as a teen movie and even to comedy films like “Top Secret.” And for every good new take we get on the subgenre, there are probably ten lacklustre films —”Swing Kids,” “Charlotte Gray,” “Max Manus: Man of War,” “Defiance” and the recent “Anthropoid” all spring to mind. Still, we’re very sure you have some other suggestions, so do share them below, and we’ll talk about them when we see you on the barricades.
