Jakob is eventually dismissed from headquarters without incurring a punishment. He stumbles across Lina (a ten-year-old girl) on the way back to his ghetto community and decides to take her in. Back at the ghetto, Jakob's friend is on the verge of suicide. To give his friend hope, Jakob tells him about his radio and how he gets regular news about Allied progress in the war.

Of course, Jakob does not have a radio. This first lie marks the beginning of Jakob's mission to change his fellow Jews' outlook on the war and the possibility of surviving their captivity. Through Jakob's well-crafted lies about Allied victories, he manages to lift everyone's spirits. The amount of suicides declines, and people begin to cherish hope for the future.

Meanwhile, the Germans catch wind of the supposed radio and begin a search for the daring rebel. Eventually, Jakob surrenders himself in order to prevent his fellow Jews from suffering repercussions for his actions. During his interrogations, Jakob confesses that he lied about the radio and that he made up the stories he told his fellow Jews.

In the end, Jakob is shot because he refuses to confess his lies before his fellow Jews. The ending of the film is an interesting one. A few minutes after Jakob is shot, the camera pans out to show how the crowd disperses and then focuses in again on Jakob's corpse. Then, Jakob begins narrating, as if to provide a postmortem commentary about what has just transpired. He tells us that he did not get to be a hero; he had even prepared a speech but was never given the chance to deliver it.

Jakob then tells us that his fellow Jews were taken to the camps and never heard from again. After saying this, he quips," But maybe, it wasn't like that at all." This surprising twist is a nod to the book's alternate endings. In the final scenes, Lina and Mischa are on a train to the gas chambers. On the way, however, the train is stopped by Russian soldiers who have just liberated Prague from the Germans. The implication is that the rest of Jakob's fellow Jews did indeed survive.

2.) MAIN CONFLICT (Type & description)

The main conflict is man versus man. In the movie, Jakob is pitted against the Nazi German military regime. Even as the Nazis work to annihilate the Jewish people, Jakob works to lift up the spirits of his people. In the end, Jakob dies, defeated by his German enemies. However, his spirit lives on, and the final scenes of the movie provide a measure of hope for all who fight against tyranny.

3.) THEME

The main themes in the movie are courage and deception as a moral choice. In the story, both Lina and Jakob exemplify courage. In the movie, Lina is a little girl who is bereft of her parents after they are shipped off to one of Hitler's infamous gas chambers. She is befriended by Jakob, who shelters her and takes her under his wing, despite the dangers involved.

The movie also explores the morality of deception through Jakob's actions. It raises an important question: is it ever appropriate to lie, especially when it will result in positive consequences?

4) TARGET(S), PERPETRATOR(S), BYSTANDER(S), & ALLIES

Jakob's main allies are Mischa (played by Liev Schreiber) and Lina (played by Hannah Taylor Gordon). The perpetrators of violence in the movie are German Nazi soldiers, who target Jews. Jakob's fellow Jews in the movie include Kirschbaum (played by Armin Mueller-Stahl), Avron (played by Michael Jeter), Rosa (played by Nina Siemaszko), Kowalsky (played by Bob Balaban), and Frankfurter (played by Alan Arkin).