In Darkness (2011)

Directed by Agnieszka Holland. Starring Robert Więckiewicz, Benno Fürmann, Krzysztof Skonieczny, Kinga Preis, Herbert Knaup, Agnieszka Grochowska, Maria Schrader, Marcin Bosak, Julia Kijowska, Jerzy Walczak, Piotr Glowacki, Zofia Pieczyńska. [R]

It’s hard to shake the surface similarities between this based-in-truth Holocaust drama and the Oscar-winning Schindler’s List: Catholic Leopold Socha helps Polish Jews hide after the liquidation of the city’s Ghetto, at first for financial gain with an indifferent heart, later for humane reasons. Rather than employ them as cheap labor in factories like Schindler, however, maintenance worker Socha keeps them out of sight in the Lwów sewers that he knows so well. Claustrophobic settings, moments of tragedy and suspense, solid acting, and the “ever-important” and sobering subject matter all work in the film’s favor…but there’s a disconnect between the distressing situations and the emotions that are meant to be inspired by them. Character development is often stunted, with the faces in the sewers as obscured by murky shadows as they are by the indistinct texture of their personalities—one of the few human dramas to arise from the huddled masses comes from a not-entirely-credible (as presented) case of out-in-the-open infidelity, the resolution of which is too rushed over to not feel a touch manipulative—and there’s too little here that stands out from the pack of similar harrowing stories of this awful chapter in human history (not just Steven Spielberg’s opus). The wobbly handheld shots and unflattering close-ups do what they intend to do—evoke a “you are there” sense of docudrama intimacy—but the effect borders on overkill in the above-ground segments. Penned by David F. Shamoon, adapting from Robert Marshall’s book, “In the Sewers of Lwów.”

55/100