room102 Academy Awards nominee for Best Foreign Movie (Poland) about the true story of a Catholic Polish sewer man who helped a group of Jews survive for over a year in the sewer system underneath the Jewish ghetto.Excellent production design, good direction and good acting by the lead actor.However, I didn't feel the writing was good enough to hold a 140-minutes movie. It would have worked better as a much shorter film.Agnieszka Holland's older movie concerning the subject of the holocaust, "Europa, Europa (1990)" was much better, as far as I remember.

Bene Cumb The fate of Jews during World War II has seen wide depiction (sometimes too wide, in comparison with many other small nations persecuted and deported) in the movies of noted filmmakers; Agnieszka Holland is no exception here. Based on true events, the film focuses on Leopold Socha, a sewer worker in the then Polish city of Lwów who used his knowledge and of the city's sewer system and inventiveness to shelter a group of Jews escaped from the city ghetto. The script and the events seem logical and realistic, but they are difficult to follow at times as they are happening in dark environment, and faces-names can be easily confused. Perhaps that was the reason that leading actors were no distinctive to me - apart from Benno Fürmann as Mundek perhaps - and the triangle of suffering Jews / unpredictable Poles / sadistic Nazis was often too blunt. The length could have been shorter as well, some protracted scenes neither accentuated the mood nor provided additional value to the course of events. All in all, W ciemności is good, but, in my opinion, Escape from Sobibor, The Pianist, and Die Fälscher, for example, have more novel approach and different angle to proceed. As for Holland herself, I find her Europa, Europa from 1991 better, i.e. more dynamic and versatile.

SpannersGerm669 In Darkness is yet another film set during the Nazi occupation of war torn Poland. The Nazis have begun their mission of terror. Rounding up Jews and taking them to concentration camps where unfortunately, many of them lost their lives.Leopold is our main character. He decides to help a handful of Jewish people, doomed to the concentration camps. In order to avoid the same fate as six million others, the Jews are taken to the underground sewers in order to hide from the dangers above. The whole film has a very claustrophobic and suspenseful tone, that tells this wonderful tale of what good human beings are capable of doing during such horrific times. We have the usual betrayal of trust which just adds to the uncertainty that the film generates. These sorts of movies of seemingly ordinary human beings doing extraordinary things against injustice are very common, but In Darkness manages to create something that you haven't seen before, in an already tired sub genre.That takes some doing and as a result, In Darkness is a film to behold!

Danusha_Goska Save Send Delete So many Holocaust movies: "Schindler's List," "The Reader," "Shoah," "Europa Europa." I knew "In Darkness" would be frightening, depressing, and disturbing. So, I didn't want to watch "In Darkness." Big mistake. "In Darkness" is a masterpiece. It's better than "Schindler's List." Yes, it is disturbing to watch, but it is great art, and great art, even as it moves us to tears, rewards us. You already know about the horrors of the Holocaust. The gift of "In Darkness" is that it transports the viewer to a better realm, where the best of humanity shines in the worst darkness we humans have produced. That best of humanity is not just Socha, the rescuer, but the filmmakers who, through their art, tell the world Socha's story. "In Darkness" has a verisimilitude, indeed a "darkness," that other Holocaust films do not. No one in this movie would look appropriate placed on a pedestal. Everyone here – Jews and rescuers – is a deeply flawed human being. The Jews hiding in the sewers look and act the way people hiding in sewers would look – filthy, hungry, and bedraggled; they are sometimes petty, jealous, and vengeful. The film is dark and claustrophobic. The Nazis are not sexy and thrilling. They are murderous scum. Not only do characters speak Polish, Yiddish, German, Ukrainian, and Russian, where appropriate, they also spoke Balak, a dialect typical of Poles living in Lwow. Krystyna Chiger, who survived the sewer, said she found the film so real it was hard to watch. None of the actors are well known outside of Poland or Germany, so I was able to invest in them as the characters they were playing in a way that I could never invest in "Schindler's List," which, of course, featured big stars I'd seen in other films – Ralph Fiennes, the handsome lover from "The English Patient," was suddenly giving an Oscar-bait performance as a fat Nazi; Ben Kingsley was no longer Gandhi, but a Jew in a concentration camp. Robert Wieckiewicz as Leopold Socha gives one of the very best, most absorbing, most believable film performances I have ever seen. Wieckiewicz is utterly believable as a petty thief who makes one right choice that leads him onto a path that awakens his soul. He starts out as a rough guy, an opportunist, who isn't ready to be as cruel as life invites him to be. The Nazis are paying bonuses to anyone who turns in Jews. Socha, already a petty criminal, who had initially helped Jews for money, could have made the choice to hand Jews over to the Nazis, for even more money. He didn't. He decided to do the next kind thing. And the next. And the next. And he becomes of the most moving, heroic people you will ever see on screen. If Socha's entirely believable transformation doesn't make you cry … you are tougher than I am. Benno Furmann is especially memorable as Mundek Margulies, one of the Jews who escapes to the sewers. Furmann has pale blue eyes that shine out intensely in the dark sewer scenes, communicating outrage, sorrow, panic, and caged macho. The tense dynamic between him and Socha electrifies their scenes. Theirs is a male-male relationship utterly beyond what any current Hollywood "buddy" movie could hope to portray. Kinga Preis is quietly moving as Wanda Socha, Leopold's plump and freckled, earth-goddess wife. Maria Schrader as one of the Jewish women in hiding adds poignancy without doing anything showy. Michal Zurawski as Bortnik, a Ukrainian who does the dirty work for the Nazis, is very handsome sickening, and terrifying. You can see that Socha could have turned out like his old friend Bortnik. But, somehow, he didn't. Why? Because Bortnik was Ukrainian, not Polish – and thus treated differently by the Nazis? Because Bortnik was more handsome? We don't know. We just get the sense that before he made the one choice that set him on a path that would turn him into a beast, Bortnik was probably much like his old pal, Socha. "In Darkness" is a feature film, not history lesson or a documentary, but for this viewer it dramatized aspects of the Holocaust, and of humanity, that other Holocaust films have failed to adequately address, or to address at all.I've never seen a film that brought home to me so vividly the mass killings of Poles that Nazis carried out. Of course I know about these killings, but, as Joseph Stalin allegedly said, "One death is a tragedy. A million deaths is a statistic." "In Darkness" depicts a mass hanging of randomly selected Polish civilians, killed in retaliation for the death of a German. This scene was orchestrated in such a way that it grabbed me as dry statistics on the page never have. "In Darkness" defies revisionist histories of World War Two that insist that Poles did nothing to help Jews and that Poles were enjoying the high life during the Nazi occupation. "In Darkness" makes clear – Nazis treated Poles with special brutality. Dramatic tension is never lost, even as the viewer learns something he would never learn from something like "Schindler's List." "In Darkness" focuses on a Pole who rescued Jews. This defies popular uses of the Brute Polak stereotype to rewrite World War Two history. Never for one minute, though, does "In Darkness" stop being a big, involving, tense, movie-movie. You care about the characters. You are swept along by the action. You hold your breath during scenes of suspense. You root for success. You tear up when things go wrong. After all that has gone before, the final scene, as humble as it is, is overwhelming. This is just a great film. See it.