Defiance

Three Jewish brothers in Nazi-occupied Soviet Union, trying to keep a bunch of Jewish refugees safe in a forest. Liev Schreiber plays Zus, and Daniel Craig is Tuvia. Zus decides the way to go is seek out and kill Nazis, so he ends up joining a Red Army group and fighting with them. Tuvia and their kid brother Asael stick around and try to keep the refugees alive through the winter with limited food and medical supplies.

Tuvia's struggle is to try and lead, to keep things from falling apart, when he didn't really want the responsibility. I don't think he - or either of his brothers - really get to grieve for their parents who were murdered at the beginning of the movie by the Nazis. He tries to save a few people he finds, other relatives. Because they're family. But that just means more people hear about him and come looking for a safe place. 

Before you know it, there's hundreds of people looking to him for answers. Why isn't there more food? I should get more food? We need medicine. We'd be better off in the ghettos. He gets this white horse from somewhere earlier in the movie that he rides around on occasionally, looking very impressive and leaderish. Then in the winter he has to kill the horse so they don't starve. The fantasy of the joys of  being leader versus the reality.

For Zus, the problem is that even as he fights the Nazis, the Soviets aren't exactly his friends. He gets referred to as the Fighting Hebrew, and there's a certain air of "you're a credit to your people" to a lot of the compliments. Just basic respect is difficult to get, and what he does get will be in spite of his Jewishness. I think he's able to overlook it up to a point because he sees his fighting with this army as being a way to protect his people. He's helping in the way that feels right to him (and getting revenge). 

It's a lot about what was the best approach. Tuvia's trying to shield and keep people together in the face of the threat. Zus chooses to confront the threat head on and try to beat it. There was one elder leader in a ghetto that felt there was a certain amount of security there, and they could just wait it out. Some of them might die, but if they fled into the woods and tried to stay there overwinter, all of them could die. How do you do the math on that?