In Darkness

Dir: Agnieszka Holland

2011

*****

Written by David F. Shamoon and directed by Agnieszka Holland, 2011’s In Darkness is based on the true story of Leopold Socha. Socha lived in a poor neighborhood of Lwow and worked for the municipal sanitation department as a sewer maintenance worker. He had a tough childhood and was quite poor, so used his knowledge of the sewer system to help him burgle. In 1943, the German-occupied city Lwów – like many other Polish cities – went through the process of ethnic cleansing and the Jews were deported and the Ghettos were liquidated. Socha witnessed the massacre of many of the townsfolk. He had found a group of Jews who had tunneled into the sewers from their house in the ghetto. Initially the Jews paid Socha to hide them in the sewer, but they eventually ran out of money. Socha, his wife Magdalena, and a co-worker Szczepek Wróblewski continued feeding and sheltering the refugees with their own resources. They aided the group for fourteen months of the Nazi German occupation of Lwow. The Soviets took over Lwów city in July 1944, by which point Socha's band made up ten of the fewer than a thousand surviving Jews in the city. Socha's and Wróblewski's actions and those of their wives led to their recognition as Righteous Among the Nations recipients. In 1946 Socha and his daughter were riding their bicycles when a Soviet military truck came careening toward them. He steered his bicycle in her direction to knock her out of the way, saving her but dying in the process. After his death the Jewish people Socha had sheltered returned to pay their respects. At his funeral it was recorded that someone at the back uttered that it was God’s punishment for helping the Jews. The film doesn’t sugar-coat Socha or the situation. He did what he did for profit at first and he wasn’t an honest man. However, he changed and helped the Jews and risked his and his family’s lives in the process. The film is very matter of fact, the brutality is shown but is never gratuitous, just enough horror is shown. There is no romanticism either, unlike Schindler’s list or The Pianist – both great films but both enter the realms of other worldliness, while In Darkness deals with the harsh truth. You can almost smell the stench of the sewers. The story is historically accurate with maybe a few things left out. The screenplay was written by  was based on Canadian writer David F. Shamoon and based on the novel In the Sewers of Lvov by Robert Marshall which was published in 1990. The last survivor of the group, Krystyna Chiger, published a memoir of her experience, The Girl in the Green Sweater: A Life in Holocaust's Shadow in 2008. It was not a source for the film, as Agnieszka Holland was unaware of the book prior to the film's release and didn’t think any of the survivors were still alive. It is fairly ridiculous that no one thought of checking but by all accounts the story is pretty accurate, with many of Chiger more vivid memories included in the film. I think the most important aspect of the film was that it was easy to follow and it laid out the fundamental lesson we can learn from the story, that is, war brings out the best and the worst in people. It didn’t need to be an art piece, most war films don’t need to be art pieces but that seems to be the way most go these days. First and foremost, war films need to be, fundamentally, anti-war films. Secondly, they need to show things exactly the way they were, and In Darkness does this extremely well. Every holocaust film now seems to be compared to Schindler's List but as much as I liked Spielberg's film, it is a big Hollywood film. I think it is about time that these stories are told honestly, without melodrama, but with the brutality that was the truth during the hellish times that they were. All historical films need to be historically accurate but some need to be more than others, otherwise they should be left alone. In this respects, In Darkness is one of the most important war films made in a very long time. Robert Więckiewicz is perfect in his performance of Leopold Socha and he holds the film together brilliantly, as he makes it easy to be convinced he is that character. I also thought the passing of time was handled rather well. It is a simple story in the scheme of things and I’m sure many studios don’t touch certain important war stories because of the concern of length, so I hope In Darkness can lead the way and prove that simple stories can be told well without the need of embellishment or fiction. A gripping historical account that is handled with respect and care that is also an unmissable lesson to future generations.