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In Darkness Our rating: Your rating: 1 2 3 4 Your Comments: see all MPAA rating: (for violence, sex, language and brief nudity) Theater release: January 05, 2012 by Sony Pictures Classics Directed by: Agnieszka Holland Runtime: 2 hours 25 minutes Cast: Robert Wieckiewicz (Leopold Socha), Benno Furmann (Mundek Margulies), Agnieszka Grochowska (Klara Keller), Maria Schrader (Paulina Chiger), Herbert Knaup (Ignacy Chiger), Kinga Preis (Wanda Socha). Related: Talk About It/Family Corner

As Holocaust dramas go, In Darkness stands firmly in the tradition of survival stories like Schindler's List and The Pianist, true-story films about Polish Jews who, against all odds, lived through the Nazi atrocities of WWII with help from some non-Jew protectors. In this case, the Schindler "protector" character is the morally dubious Leopold Socha (Robert Wieckiewicz), a sewer worker and petty thief in Nazi-occupied Lvov, Poland circa 1943. Socha, a Polish Catholic with a wife and young daughter to support, is offered reward money by the Nazis for every Jew he finds hiding in the sewers below the recently liquidated Lvov ghetto. But when Socha stumbles upon a group of Jews willing to pay him even more money to protect their hiding place, he begins a journey down a somewhat accidental, opportunistic path toward heroism.

Based in part on Robert Marshall's 1991 book In the Sewers of Lvov and penned by first-time screenwriter David F. Shamoon, In Darkness—nominated for an Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film—earns its name because most of its action takes place in the murky, claustrophobic, grotesque sewer system below the Lvov ghetto, where Socha hides a ragtag band of Jews for over a year. The group—which includes the wealthy Chiger family, an older rabbi, a young con man named Mundek (Benno Furmann), the feisty Klara (who falls in love with Mundek), and the tempestuous Chaja (Julia Kijowska)—hides in wet, black, rat-filled tunnels; and yet in spite of the inhumane misery, it's a safe haven compared to the world of daylight above their heads, where merciless Nazis randomly kill Jews and ship the live ones to concentration camps.

Robert Wieckiewicz as Leopold Socha, Kinga Preis as Wanda Socha

The name In Darkness represents more than just the literal setting, however; it's also a metaphor for the darkness of humanity, which comes through loud and clear. One of the ways Darkness differs from its companions in the Holocaust genre is that there isn't a clear delineation between the heroes and villains, the good and bad. Here (with a few exceptions), it's more like the bad and the worse. Under the direction of acclaimed Polish filmmaker Agnieszka Holland (Europa, Europa; The Secret Garden), Darkness explores ambiguous moral territory, where the Jews aren't all good and neither is the Gentile who protects them. Holland, who collaborated with her friend Krzysztof Kieslowski on the screenplay for the Three Colors trilogy, is no stranger to telling stories of moral complexity, and in Darkness she offers a nuanced document of the Holocaust that is strengthened by its realistic reluctance to put halos on any of its characters.

The families make the best of their underground haven

This is not to say we don't feel connected to the characters or root for them to survive. We do, perhaps even moreso because of their blatant imperfections. And Socha—a flawed man whose good heart is gradually revealed as his bond with the Jews grows throughout the film—is a genuinely likeable protagonist. Wieckiewicz's superb performance as Socha is the film's heartbeat, for it embodies in microcosm the moral murkiness of the film at large. Socha is a man who spends his life pulled between the dark underworld (literally) and the goodness of daylight, family and faith. He's driven by money, power, and pride, but also by selflessness and love; the latter are drawn out as his role as protector of the Jews transitions from merely mercenary motives (they pay him well) to personal and spiritual ones (as their money runs out).

Within Socha is a spark of humanity, a conscience that leads him to do what's right and to even sacrifice his own well-being for the sake of others. It's this spark—this light amidst the overwhelming darkness—that seems to interest Holland most. Her camera beautifully captures the dynamics of dark and light throughout the film, putting audiences in the painful, disorienting darkness for much of the time but offering occasional glimpses of the above-ground world and its accompanying bursts of light.

Where does that light come from—that spark of goodness? Holland is certain that it does not come from the church, which frustratingly acquiesces to the Nazi atrocities in the film. Notably, the final "hiding place" of the Jews in the sewers is a cavern beneath the town's cathedral, where echoes of the monks' hymns can be constantly heard, even while the hiding Jews are starving and suffering underneath. In one memorable scene as the Jews celebrate a makeshift Passover meal underground, the church above offers communion elements to newly confirmed Catholics. The two groups are celebrating communion and thanksgiving in their own ways, and yet they are worlds apart … and the grace of those above seems so far from the plight of those below.

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