#bennofurman

2 hours 25 minutes

Rated R (Violence, Disturbing Images, Sexuality, Nudity and Language)

Directed by Agnieszka Holland

Starring Robert Wieckiewicz, Benno Furman, Agnieszka Grochowska, Maria Schrader, Herbert Knaup, Kinga Preis, and Krzysztof Skonieczny

3 out of 4 stars

In Darkness is a Holocaust movie that shares some similarities with Schindler's List. Both films are true stories about two somewhat cocky men who managed to save some Jews (for Schindler, over 1,100) during the period. Schindler wasn't an ordinary hero, at least the way Liam Neeson portrayed him to be. He was a cheating, womanizing, and kind of arrogant rich man. The same kinda goes for Leopold Socha (played by Robert Wieckiewicz). He was a Polish sewer worker who managed to save a group of Jews from the Nazis by hiding them underneath the ghetto in the tunnels for over a year. Socha wasn't a womanizer and obviously wasn't very rich but like Schindler he started saving Jews at first not for his morals but because, well, he just did. As both movies progress we start to see the changing emotions of Schindler and Socha towards Jews. As they both start off not really exactly caring for Jews they end up loving them as if they were part of their family.

This new Polish movie from Agnieszka Holland (who did another popular Holocaust movie in 1990 called Europa Europa) was recently nominated for Best Foreign Language Film at the Oscars but lost out to the much better Iranian drama, A Separation. Stylistically it's very well-made. Holland takes us into the claustrophobic, dark, decaying environment of the tunnels and shows us the realism of how uncomfortable, bored, and dirty these Jews must have felt for over a year. What I like about Holland is that she tells us extraordinary, little-known true stories of the Holocaust. Europa Europa, for example, is about Solomon Perel, who as a teenager managed to escape from the Nazis by first posing as a Communist and then as a Nazi. He went so far as to sew things to his penis to make it look like he wasn't circumcised for fear of being caught as a Jew. And, he survived! Without having to kill any Jews while pretending to be a Nazi.

The only slight problem I had with In Darkness is that Holland is trying to make us care for a small group of Jews, and not necessarily the other 6 million that were killed. I know Schindler's List somewhat did this too and many critics have complained that the ending is too "happy" for a Holocaust movie because it presents Schindler's Jews as they are today and kinda seems to forget about the millions of others that were murdered. Well, I don't entirely agree with that. Spielberg wants us to feel closure for the surviving Jews but he presents so many terrifying scenes of the Nazi's evil actions on other Jews in over 3 hours that by the end we have undoubtedly felt emotional pity for ALL the victims of the Holocaust. With In Darkness that feeling of catharsis is somewhat weaker. At the same time though Holland does manage to show us enough scenes of the Nazis being evil Nazis. By the end I felt closure for the group of Jews that Socha saved but in the back of my mind I also felt quite sad for the ones he couldn't save.

Holland obviously isn't an evil person who doesn't care about the victims of the Holocaust. In fact, she's angry about it. She knows that this was an unspeakable period. By the end though I think she tries a little too hard to express her frustration at the purpose of this event. There's a particular ending message right before the credits come up that feels too preachy. I won't say it though!