In Darkness.
The chilling statistics that loom over all examinations of the Holocaust also serve to deny the dead any sense of individuality. Murder in the millions is simply too vast to comprehend on any personal level, and so the arts have had to decide upon a framework of appropriate response. In cinema in particular, this is the tight focus on small stories of heroism and resilience, which offer a more palatable prism through which to illuminate the dreadful whole.
The most recent example of this form is the Polish film In Darkness, an adaptation of Robert Marshall’s book In The Sewers of Lvov. Based on real events in what is now Lviv in Ukraine, the film describes a 14-month period in the life of Leopold “Poldek” Socha (Robert Więckiewicz), a municipal sewer worker and petty thief, who turns Oskar Schindler when he uncovers an escape plan among Jews in the town’s ghetto. They burrow into the sewer—whether to flee the city or simply to hide is unclear—but in so doing they avoid either immediate execution or transportation to the camps as the ghetto is dissolved.
Poldek, who hides his plunder from burglary in the sewers, finds an even richer source of income among the Jews, who will pay handsomely for his incomparable knowledge of the subterranean labyrinth. He is able to guide them to areas of relative safety even as the slaughter continues overhead.
But Poldek is no angel: Initially he intends to sell them out, and engages in as much anti-Semitic rhetoric as any Nazi or compliant Pole. But eventually a human heart is discovered beneath his stained apparel and doughy features and their arrangement becomes less economic than one of selfless salvation.
The cruel mathematics remain at play throughout, and desperation drives a hard bargain. Poldek’s calculations range from practical matters of space (how many people can he can safely conceal in the narrow pipes and gutters?) to economic prudence (how much will the condemned pay for their lives?). The financial brinkmanship extends into daily life, too: The greengrocer begins raising onion prices after noticing Poldek’s wife splash the cash.
The most significant negotiations, however, remain with his own conscience. The Germans offer 500 zloty apiece for apprehended Jews, and balance their own books in a ruthless manner. Ten Poles are publicly hanged in retribution for the death of one occupying officer and Poldek knows that his financial suicide might easily adopt a more literal resonance.
The director Agnieszka Holland has little choice but to throw us deep into the grime, and much of the film comprises barely glimpsed, ghostly faces amid the squalor. The camera ascends and descends from sewer to street and back again, inviting a continual assessment of hierarchies. Although the hidden Jews are always at the very bottom—even the rats gradually come to regard their reluctant neighbours as lower in the food chain—they are never entirely forgotten. But the attention is not always for the best. Poldek’s old friend Bortnik (Michał Żurawski), a guard in the Ukrainian army, is continually encouraging the search for the lucrative quarry. His torch’s beam, flashed around the nooks and boltholes that represent home, comes to represent the ultimate terror.
Holland is one of Poland’s most decorated contemporary filmmakers, who has also directed episodes of The Wire, and she makes worthy attempts to humanize all of her characters here, even if the acts portrayed tend to do the opposite. The prisoners are all at least partially-rounded: They bicker over money, shoot drugs, commit infidelity and worse. It is not always successful—the forbearing stoicism of the women and children seems idealised, likewise the hot-headed and steely-eyed Mundek (Benno Fürmann) is perhaps too much the action hero.
One can never properly claim to have enjoyed a film like this, and it even feels uncomfortable to admire the performances too fully. These are people either pretending to commit atrocity or to have atrocity committed upon them. But the leads play their thankless roles well (and Kinga Preis as Poldek’s wife is also terrific). In Darkness therefore feels like the kind of film we should see, if only to hope that the seemingly limitless well of such stories will eventually run dry.