The Fixer: A Review

THE FIXER

Allow me to relate a quick story before staring my review for The Fixer. I was at a soccer match recently with a coworker. Somehow, the subject of the Muppets came up. My coworker asked his female companion who her favorite Muppet was. "Gonzo", she answered. He, without missing a beat replied rather cheerfully, "Ah, so you're a Zionist". I was just overhearing this conversation. I was also shocked, appalled and disgusted by my coworker's blatant and open antisemitism. I still think that this statement is grotesque. The casualness of his "Ah, so you're a Zionist" reply, coupled with the cheerful tone he expressed it in, sickens me. 

I relate this story because it shows that antisemitism is sadly still with us today as it was at the that The Fixer is set in. Be it Czarist Russia or contemporary America, hatred towards Jewish people is a plague that has not disappeared. The Fixer, based on Bernard Malamud's novel, is a good go of trying to detail the monstrous effects of anti-Jewish sentiment on one man. It is unfortunate that The Fixer is not particularly good, done in by an excessive length and some weak performances. 

Yakov Bok (Alan Bates) is a Ukrainian Jew who has shaved his beard, cut off his hair and left his shtetl for Kiev. It is probably the worst time for him to have done so. Yakov unwittingly finds himself in a pogrom where tailor Aaron Latky (David Opatoshu) rescues him. All Jews are relegated to the Kiev ghetto, but Yakov can "pass' for a Gentile. He does not want to, but circumstances force his hands. He needs work fixing things like windows and balcony rails. Coming home, he finds a man lying in the snow. He is asked to bring him inside by his worried daughter.

That man is Lebedev (Hugh Griffith), a member of the antisemitic Black Hundreds. Lebedev mistakes Yakov as a non-Jew and gives him work painting a room in his home. His daughter Zinaida (Elizabeth Hartman) is also fond of Yakov. That fondness turns into desire, which a surprisingly reluctant Yakov attempts to reciprocate. In a shocking twist, Yakov is arrested when his Jewish identity is discovered.

The prosecutor, Bibikov (Dirk Bogarde) is imperious but honest. He sees no need to charge Yakov with the lurid suggestion of attempted intercourse with a Gentile. He thinks charging him with illegally living outside the ghetto is enough. Yakov leaves and finds new work overseeing a brickmaking factory. He helps an elderly Jewish man who had been attacked with a rock. 

Yakov, however, now finds himself arrested again. The charges though are far more serious. The openly antisemitic prosecutor Grubeshov (Ian Holm) charges him with murder. The victim is a twelve-year-old boy whom Grubeshov accuses Yakov of killing in a ritual murder to get Christian blood to mix with Passover matzoh balls. Grubeshov also is convinced that Yakov is part of the Kahal, a secret international Jewish conspiracy to overthrow Czar Nicholas II. Now, Yakov endures physical and psychological torture in his efforts to prove his innocence. Those who can help him are conveniently eliminated by the Czarist state. Crazy Orthodox priests attempt to force a conversion. Yakov goes a little crazy himself. Will he be pressured to confess to a crime that he did not commit? Will justice be served?

The Fixer is well-meaning. This story, inspired by true-life events, deals with an important topic that still sadly resonates today. The problem in The Fixer is not the plot. The problem in The Fixer is primarily the pacing. The film runs a punishing two hours and twelve minutes. The viewer feels every single one of them. I think director John Frankenheimer would have done well to cut The Fixer to a shorter length. 

For example, it is almost an hour before we get to the crux of the story with the murder accusation. What came before is Yakov leaving, the pogrom and his encounters with Lebedev and Zenaida. Of particular note is when she beckons our hunky handyman into her bedroom. He goes to the bathroom and is debating with himself as he pulls off and puts back on his clothes. Yakov is about to walk in completely nude when he quickly goes back into the restroom to slip on a towel.

Is he concerned that he will be found out owing to what I presume is his circumcision? Is it that he does not want to bed this goy girl? The Fixer is a bit muddled on that, and ultimately it is something else that drives him from her embraces. Ultimately, this section has almost nothing to do with the second half involving the murder. I think it has a very tenuous connection. However, I also think that we might have gotten through things faster had Frankenheimer and screenwriter Dalton Trumbo cut the many conversations between Yakov and Latky.

The Fixer also has something of a sluggish manner to it. To be blunt, The Fixer drags. A lot of it feels empty, hollow. I would describe the film as stuffy and a bit lifeless. It is very serious, perhaps too self-serious. Much of that goes towards most, but not all, of the performances. 

Alan Bates received a Best Actor Oscar nomination for The Fixer. It is his sole nomination. One wonders why exactly after watching the film. For most of The Fixer, Bates seems very serious and aloof. Yakov does not come to life. Instead, Bates just makes him someone who struggles to react to anything. There is a blankness for most of Bates' performance that it takes away from what could and should have been Yakov's unraveling. Bates at times fails to have any emotion, good or bad. It is only at the very end when Alan Bates shows something like life. 

Other actors seemed to be the opposite to Alan Bates' rather remote and removed manner. Hugh Griffith went over-the-top as the drunken, slightly bumbling and unaware Lebedev. Elizabeth Hartman similarly joined Griffith in his broad manner as this failed temptress. Her last scene where she lies about what happened between Zenaida and Yakov was also theatrical. She at least was not as downright crazed as the fascinatingly named Georgia Brown. Brown played Marfa Golov, the child's mother. She was so over-the-top in her hysterics that even the openly hostile Grubeshov would have questioned her veracity. Murray Melvin as the prison priest and Mike Pratt as the village priest were similarly cartoonish. One watches and wonders if either or both think that they are in a farce instead of a serious drama.

Alan Bates may have been the actor nominated for his performance. I would say that two other actors gave better performances. Dirk Bogarde is strong as Bibikov. He is imperious early on. However, as The Fixer went on, Bogarde brought an efficient and almost protective manner as the magistrate. He is not bigoted and committed to the pursuit of justice. In a better film, Bibikov's shocking end would have had a greater impact.

The clear standout is Ian Holm as the bigoted, ruthless and arrogant Grubeshov. I think that is because Holm makes Grubeshov into a cold, efficient man not easily moved. Holm's cold manner, his moral certainty in his antisemitism, is a standout performance. At one point, he attempts to show Yakov how it is "scientific" that Jews are born criminals. He shows Yakov a chart of various "Jewish noses" to indicate which ones go with which crimes. Earlier, Grubeshov chuckles at the idea that Yakov could be telling the truth. He tells Yakov that lying is one of the few Jewish skills. Ian Holm's performance makes Grubeshov a great monster. 

The film has a Maurice Jarre score that relies on what sounds like tradition Yiddish music. The violin solos, while not terrible, did not have as strong an impact as I think The Fixer was going for. 

The Fixer, I think, might be remade as a miniseries. That would allow for a chance to delve into Yakov Bok's dark night of the soul. The film curiously ends right when his trial is about to start, when his case became a cause célèbre not unlike the Alfred Dreyfus affair in France. The Fixer is elevated by Dirk Bogarde and Ian Holm's performances. It is undercut by most everyone else in the film as well as its excessive runtime. 

The Fixer fell a bit short of what it could have been. Still, it is better than my coworker's casual antisemitism.

DECISION: C-