In Darkness (2011 film)

In Darkness
UK cinematic poster
Directed by Agnieszka Holland
Written by David F. Shamoon
Based on In the Sewers of Lvov
by Robert Marshall
Produced by Andrzej Besztak
Steffen Reuter
Patrick Knippel
Marc-Daniel Dichant
Leander Carell
Juliusz Machulski
Paul Stephens
Eric Jordan
Starring Robert Więckiewicz
Benno Fürmann
Agnieszka Grochowska
Maria Schrader
Herbert Knaup
Kinga Preis
Krzysztof Skonieczny
Cinematography Jolanta Dylewska
Edited by Mike Czarnecki
Music by Antoni Komasa-Łazarkiewicz
Production
companies
Zebra Films, Schmidtz Katze Filmkollektiv, the Film Works
Distributed by Sony Pictures Classics
Release dates
Running time
 144 minutes
Countries Poland
Germany
Canada
Languages Polish
German
Yiddish
Ukrainian

In Darkness (Polish: W ciemności) is a 2011 Polish drama film written by David F. Shamoon and directed by Agnieszka Holland. It was nominated for Best Foreign Language Film at the 84th Academy Awards.

Based on true events during German occupation of Poland, the film tells about Leopold Socha, a sewer worker in the Polish city of Lwów. He used his knowledge of the city's sewer system to shelter a group of Jews who had escaped from the Lwów Ghetto during the Holocaust in Poland.

Plot

In Darkness is a dramatization of a rescue of Jewish refugees during World War II in the German-occupied city Lwów (Lemberg in German, L'viv in Ukrainian). For over a year, a Polish Catholic sewer maintenance worker and burglar, Leopold Socha along with his friend and co-worker Szczepek Wróblewski, hid and cared for a group of Polish Jews who had escaped the massacres and deportations during the liquidation of the Lwów Ghetto. At first the men demand daily payment for their help but they continue to aid the group long after the Jews' money has run out and aiding them had become ever more dangerous. The Jewish ghetto had been established in 1941 and the Nazis decided to liquidate it in June 1943. The Soviets took over Lwów city in July 1944, by which point Socha's band made up 10 of the fewer than 1,000 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.

Cast

Production and release

Dedicated to Marek Edelman, the film is a Polish-German-Canadian coproduction, with a screenplay by Canadian writer David F. Shamoon. In Darkness is based on the book In the Sewers of Lvov (1990) by Robert Marshall. 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 (2008). It was not a source for the film, as Holland was unaware of the book prior to the film's release This was the first full-length film shown at the 23rd Polish Film Festival in America in Chicago on the Opening Night Gala.

Reception

As of October 2020, a majority of film critics have given the film a positive review. In Darkness has an approval rating of 88% on review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, based on 114 reviews, and an average rating of 7.60/10. It also has a score of 74 out of 100 on Metacritic, based on 36 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".

A review by Lisa Schwarzbaum of Entertainment Weekly called it "a harrowing nail-biter of a movie". Ella Taylor of NPR wrote In Darkness "satisfies for the intensity of the performances and for the artful contrasting of life on the teeming streets of L'viv with life and death in the dim, rat-infested sewers", adding that it "is often a thrilling adventure picture — as if Anne Frank had found an Inglourious Basterd to help her make The Great Escape". Ty Burr of The Boston Globe called the film "a harrowing Holocaust tale, but one that speaks to humankind's capacity to endure, to fight on in the face of terrible cruelty", adding that Holland "elicits taut performances from a strong cast". David Denby of The New Yorker called it "the most volatile that Holland has directed. With a distinguished, hardworking cast of German and Polish actors", noting that "honesty is the movie's greatest strength". Todd McCarthy of The Hollywood Reporter said this "harrowing, engrossing, claustrophobic and sometimes literally hard to watch […] robust, arduous drama is more ironic and multi-faceted than most such tales and should be well received by the considerable art house audience worldwide partial to the subject matter". Joe Morgenstern of The Wall Street Journal said this "brave epic" film's "suspense, derived from a true story, is excruciating and inspiring in equal measure". A. O. Scott of The New York Times called In Darkness "suspenseful, horrifying and at times intensely moving […] touching, warm and dramatically satisfying". On the other hand, Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times dismissed the film as redundant and inferior to Schindler's List which was "more entertaining" in his view. Michael Atkinson of the Village Voice claimed that "Holland does skirt the ethical entrapment of Schindler's List (over-lionizing the Aryan rescuer)", adding: "It's not fair, but there it is: We've been here before." The German authorities in occupied Poland referred to non-Jews, including Poles, as Aryans; colloquially, documents proving one's non-Jewish identity were called "Aryan papers", and the areas prohibited to Jews were known collectively as "the Aryan side". the Polish districts of citi David Edelstein of New York Magazine wrote: "In outline, In Darkness is a standard conversion melodrama, but little within those parameters is easy. The darkness lingers into the light." Mick LaSalle of San Francisco Chronicle called it "an extraordinary movie, and somehow good art […] a gripping piece of history and also an exploration into the mysteries of the human soul", and gave it "the highest recommendation".

Awards

In Darkness was nominated for the Best Foreign Language Film at the 84th Academy Awards. Nominated alongside the official Canadian nominee Monsieur Lazhar, it attracted attention in the country for marking the first time in the history of Cinema of Canada that had its two films nominated for the best foreign language film Oscar in the same year. At the International Valladolid Film Festival (SEMINCI), Agnieszka Holland won the award for Best Director. The film garnered several award nominations at the 32nd Genie Awards, including Best Adapted Screenplay for Shamoon. It also received the Grand Prix at the 7th Batumi International Art-house Film Festival.

See also