In Darkness (15)

Alison Rowat's Review

Submerging the viewer in a wartime tale of terror and suffering, Agnieszka Holland’s drama sounds like a tough watch, and it is.

This Oscar-nominated picture is much more than that, however. Tense, riveting, deeply moving, it’s one of the most unforgettable pieces of cinema you are likely to see this year. Had the Iranian Oscar entry, A Separation, not have been so outstanding, it is a fair bet Holland’s picture, Poland’s entry, would have won the Academy Award.

Based on a true story, In Darkness opens in 1944 in Lvov as the Nazi persecution of the Jews assumes ever more horrific forms. Faced with a choice of dying in the ghetto or elsewhere, a band of men, women and children goes underground to the sewer system in the hope of hiding from the terror, or finding a way to escape.

It is not long before they are discovered by Leopold Socha (Robert Wieckiewicz), a sewer worker who knows the tunnels like the pathways home. Socha agrees to help them but he is interested in his “charges” only for what he can charge them for food and protection. Bit by bit, however, a connection is made between Socha and those forced to rely upon him.

Holland, the director of Europa, Europa and Angry Harvest, has no hesitation in showing humanity at its best, worst, and most desperate. When she does cut away from what is going on underground, it is to remind the viewer of the horrors above ground. Slowly, shafts of humanity begin to pierce the gloom. Holland handles the transition with great care, always aiming for authenticity over sentimentality and her picture is all the more powerful for it.

Paul Greenwood's Review

The true story of how a group of Jews spent many months during WW2 hiding in a city sewer is brought to vivid and harrowing life in this lengthy but powerful Oscar-nominated Polish drama.

Below ground the director can get a little caught up in making sure we’re not spared the indignities of the situation, but above ground there’s a captivating central character in Socha, the opportunist sewer worker and part-time criminal who aids the group, and the morality of his decisions drives the film.

A familiar scenario has fresh light cast on it thanks to focussing on the treatment of the Jews by their own compatriots rather than the Nazis, and unusually for this sort of film it casts a fairly original gaze at profiteering and the effect on humanity rather than heroism while still managing to build tension and poignancy on its way to a stunning finale.