Two and a half hours of darkness leaving you exhausted and near-traumatized, In Darkness is not exactly first-date material. It may not be for the faint of heart, but it’s one of the most challenging and important films at the Glasgow Film Festival. It’s Poland’s official entry for the Oscars this year and stands to pick up the gong for best foreign language film this Sunday.
Directed by one of Poland’s most esteemed filmmakers, Agnieszka Holland, it handles the issue of the extreme hatred and prejudice suffered by the Jews at the hands of the Nazis during World War II. This is not new territory for the director: her 1990 film Europa Europa is a holocaust film which also received an Academy Award nomination.
In Darkness tells the story of sewage worker, Leopold Socha (Robert Wieckiewicz) from Lviv in Poland which was occupied by the Nazis and the Ukranian military forces who would do their bidding. Socha is a simple, ordinary man who chooses to risk his life in order to keep a small group of Jews hidden in the black underground labyrinth that is his sewers.
Socha is obviously reminiscent of Oscar Schindler, the eponymous hero of Schindler’s List, in that he went through great hardship to save Jewish lives. Socha differs from Spielberg’s protagonist in that he was a modest layman though. The fact that he was a simple man is significant: even he of modest means can tell grave inhumanity is being done by the Nazis despite their well-calculated methods of brainwashing the masses with propaganda and covering the horrific truth of genocide.
The characters are dynamic and complex – there is a good and a bad side of all characters. As heroic as Socha is, he’s still very much a human being who’s capable of right and wrong decisions. He’s seen weighing up whether to help the Jews for a price or hand them over to the Nazis for a reward. The Jews are not just passive victims either, they show a mistrusting and volatile side that makes Socha’s mission even harder. Fortunately humanity prevails against all odds. That’s essentially what this film is about – showing that humanity can prosper against the pressure of extreme hatred and fear.
The characters are portrayed with nuanced performances from the whole cast. The film is full of suspense to the point that I could feel the tension in the theatre and witnessed moments where I could hear people audibly gasp. It’s well-shot and visually rich apart from the fact it’s mostly set in sewers in almost completely obscuring darkness. The gritty aesthetic is far from comfortable to sit through for the length of the film, but it makes its point in letting the audience begin to appreciate the conditions these Jews survived in.
In Darkness is impressively David Shamoon’s first screenplay based on the book In the Sewers of Lvov by Robert Marshall. The film waits until the very last minute to reveal that it was all true. This, to me, was a devastating master stroke which leaves you stunned, contemplating how real human beings could’ve endured 14 months of such torment.
In Darkness is important because it forces people to reflect upon the issue of the holocaust. It forces people to revisit the lessons of the past which are as relevant in the present day as they always will be. In Darkness is a harrowing experience, but the silver lining is the prevailing humanity and compassion capable of the ordinary man.
