In Darkness: Just when you thought you could never watch another drama about surviving the Holocaust, veteran Polish director Agnieszka Holland unearths an astonishing saga from a subterranean past. Based on a true story, In Darkness is about the Jews who spent 14 months hiding out in the labyrinthine sewer systems of Lvov as the Nazis liquidated the Jewish ghetto. The protagonist is a Catholic sewer worker and petty thief who became their reluctant Schindler. But Holland avoids Spielbergian constructs of good and evil to create a shaded portrait of prejudice and opportunism, empathy and self-sacrifice. With much of the action artfully shot in the lantern glimmers of an underground maze, she lends new meaning to “the light at the end of the tunnel.”
In Darkness: Just when you thought you could never watch another drama about surviving the Holocaust, veteran Polish director Agnieszka Holland unearths an astonishing saga from a subterranean past. Based on a true story, In Darkness is about the Jews who spent 14 months hiding out in the labyrinthine sewer systems of Lvov as the Nazis liquidated the Jewish ghetto. The protagonist is a Catholic sewer worker and petty thief who became their reluctant Schindler. But Holland avoids Spielbergian constructs of good and evil to create a shaded portrait of prejudice and opportunism, empathy and self-sacrifice. With much of the action artfully shot in the lantern glimmers of an underground maze, she lends new meaning to “the light at the end of the tunnel.”