In Darkness | Film review

In Darkness takes its time clarifying exactly what story it wants to tell, but after a slack first 40 minutes, this Foreign Language Oscar contender from Agnieszka Holland (Europa Europa) becomes a subtly original addition to the canon of Holocaust cinema. Lightly dramatized from a true story, it focuses on the ordeal of a group of Polish Jews hidden for a year by Leopold Socha (Robert Wieckiewicz), a Lvov sewer worker who shelters them in exchange for payment. That he’ll have a dawning, Schindler-esque transformation is suggested, but it’s long in coming; he’s depicted as an anti-Semite who casually tosses off slurs until the end.

What sets the movie apart is its unusually grueling and intimate depiction of life in the sewer, a place full of rats, disease and—in another unexpected touch—a few moments of furtive eroticism, which lead to a pregnancy and, eventually, the most casually brutal horror imaginable. Meanwhile, up top, Socha must keep his family quiet, allay the suspicions of a collaborationist official (Michal Zurawski) and, late in the film, silence a Nazi officer in a way that boomerangs into tragedy. Andrzej Wajda’s Kanal is an obvious influence, but the grime factor is even more overpowering—particularly in a suspenseful flooding sequence. Only the initial lack of focus dulls the material’s inherent power.