Review of In Darkness (2011) by Mike C — 21 Jun 2012

Maybe I knew when I ordered it on Netflix, but if I did, I'd forgotten this was one of five films nominated for a Best Foreign Film Oscar last year...my fav category by far. Not knowing that, I was pretty impressed by it. Even more so as the final bits came on and I was able to confirm some of the truth in the movie (like the little girl in the movie had a book published about the ordeal within the last five years).

It's a WWII movie. Not necessarily a Holocaust movie, but it's definitely about treatment of Jews. This time, the story is in Poland, where a band of Jews hides in the sewers for 14 months. Like in the greatest movie of all-time, Schindler's List, they have a little help from an unlikely source: an anti-Semitic Catholic who first takes them on for money, but later out of humanity.

These movies are always uncomfortable. First, there is the treatment from the Germans, which just makes me ill. Then there are moments where the protagonist shies away from being good, and no one wants to see a movie with an evil protagonist. He eventually comes around and proves to be a decent guy. Or quite good actually. His wife, I was ready to call every name in the book and say how slyly evil she was in her non-support of her husband (in one scene, he leaves his daughter's communion because it is pouring and he fears for their lives in the flooding sewers). How fucking petty is that? I really, really hated her at that moment as that one scene exhibited perfectly how atrocities are able to take place via apathy of the public. She does some things later that make her a little warm, but that's a great scene because of what I just described.

In the end, great story. This guy didn't save as many as Schindler, and Holland is no Spielberg, so the movie falls short on both the dramatic and artistic sides when compared to Schindler's (as every movie does). Some may complain there are too many of these movies. But c'mon, we could see 50 movies about this shit every year and still not run out of worthy stories to tell.