In Darkness is the aptly titled new film by Agnieszka Holland. As well as having a prolific directorial career in native Poland, to English-speaking audiences, she is perhaps best known for her work on The Wire and the 1993 adaptation of The Secret Garden. With her new film, however, she returns to her country’s tortured history by telling the true story of one man’s mission to save a group of Polish Jews by hiding them in the city’s sewers.
Leopold Socha (Robert Wieckeiwicz) is an anti-Semite working for the Nazis in his occupied town by day, whilst robbing their houses by night. He stashes his swag in the sewers where he works. He is a man of limited principles, looking out for his family, able to ignore the brutality and bloodshed that surrounds him.
One day down in the sewers he stumbles upon a large group of Jews who have fled underground during a mass execution in the town. Fearing Socha will turn them in, they offer to pay him daily for the privilege of staying hidden in the dark, dank conditions. Socha jumps at the chance, but warns their stoic leader Mundek (Benno Fürmann) that he will not be able to conceal all of them and that the group must be culled. Gradually however, as the group’s plight becomes ever more desperate and the world above becomes increasingly ravaged by senseless war, Socha’s perspectives shift.
The cinematic antecedent to In Darkness is Spielberg’s epic Schindler’s List. Both are marked by a harrowing melancholy, in terms of subject matter and exhibition. As the underground group’s situation goes from bad to worse – narrowly escaping detection, a horrifying birth scene and rising water levels – Holland’s camera captures the unremitting dinginess of the sewers and the putrid surroundings the Jews are forced to make a home out of for months on end. The gloomy setting, punctuated by chiaroscuro candlelight, finds its parallel with Spielberg’s black and white cinematography.
In fact, Holland’s finest achievement is to make the restrictive environment cinematic at all. But she does just that. With fine performances all round and a haunting score, this is a confident piece of filmmaking that retains an uplifting humanity even if it is set during truly inhumane times.
Adam awarded In Darkness four Torches of Truth
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