Agnieszka Holland’s choice of L'viv as the setting for In Darkness (2011) raises a number of important questions about the portrayal of
the Holocaust. The
film, which is based on a memoir, portrays the fate of a group of Jews who are
hidden and kept alive in the city’s sewers by a Pole. The Pole initially helps the Jews purely for material gain, and shows little empathy for their predicament. Yet throughout the film he begins to grow attached to his charges, eventually stopping taking payment and risking himself and his
family for their sake. Some reviewers have criticized the focus on the Polish
rescuer, which takes centre stage against the backdrop of
the plight of the Jewish characters, much in the same way that Schindler’s List, focuses principally
on a German character.
It was precisely this
focus on a Pole that, understandably, dominated Polish reaction to In Darkness. The film taps into what has become the most problematic area of Holocaust
memory in Poland: the exact nature of Polish role in the Holocaust – as
bystander, rescuer, exploiter, denouncer. All of these roles can be observed
in the film. The central character, Leopold Socha, is presented initially as an unscrupulous criminal, but progresses to show courage and empathy
towards the Jews he helps. The film explores the difficult dilemmas faced by
non-Jews in the Holocaust in a nuanced way, showing the fine line between
decisions to help or collaborate that often depended on pragmatism,
circumstance and improvisation. The character is Socha is ably played by Robert
Więckiewicz, who succeeds in being by turns brutal and empathetic, and even in
his seeming conversion retains a degree of ambiguity. As he gleefully
celebrates saving ‘my Jews’ (a phrase he repeats several times) at the end of
the film, the viewer is left wondering whether it is human courage and kindness that are at work
here, or an expression of a kind of ownership and the obsessive desire to defy the Nazis.
It is difficult not to
compare In Darkness with Holland’s
other famous film about the war and the Holocaust, Europa
Europa (1990). There is a stark contrast. The latter film is by turns
grotesque, fantastical, funny and tragic, encapsulating the horrors of the war
in a carnivalesque spirit, and underpinned by skilful and elaborate plotting
and baroque, deliberately overblown aesthetics. In Darkness
has more in common with a Hollywood thriller, retaining a relentless and linear
tension throughout, with almost no concessions to irony and certainly not to
fantasy. It retains the bleakness of canonical Holocaust films like Schindler’s List and The Pianist, but without ever getting
close to their pathos. Its claustrophobic, jerky camera work and settings have
more in common with the type of thriller that Holland has directed recently (The Wire; The Killing).
