Agnieszka Holland's film In Darkness is not a typical Holocuast film, although it certainly has many similar threads and themes that are familiar to the genre. This is the more unseen view of things -- literally unseen. The film tells the story of a group of Jews in the Lvov Ghetto in Poland who snuck into the sewer in an effort to escape their dire situation. When they got down there, they ran into Leopold Socha (Robert Wieckiewicz), a non-partisan Catholic sewer inspector who figured he could make a bit of money from them by showing them a good hiding place and keeping them stocked with food and other goods they would need for survival.
Once he put them in a relatively secret spot in an off-tunnel, insisting that only a dozen of them could live down there, he found that such a pure business relationship was not totally morally fulfilling. He and his corpulent wife Wanda (Kinga Preis) found themselves caring for the Jews more and more, ultimately risking their own lives for these people. Once the Ghetto was liquidated in 1943 their challenge increased as Nazi and Polish police inspections sped up and intensified.
There is something particularly interesting about a film that is mostly shot in darkness (as the title would suggest). There is a strange power to the mixture of grays and blacks, shadows and peeks of light that is rather mystifying. Of course, there is something particularly unsettling about no knowing what is coming in the distance or from around the corner. Probably most powerful about this film, and the cinematography by Jolanta Dylewska, is that we are put in the exact psychological space of the hiding Jews. As they hear distant noises in the far-off tunnels, which might be humans and might just be water, steam or gas, they are afraid... but so are we.
This is also a film about living in shit - literally. For years and years these people live in and next to a lagoon of human waste that seems to be everywhere in their space. They must eat and clean themselves, take care of mundane life things and then get into more specialized ones all within the nose of such a place. That some of the people try to have sex in it (totally ignoring for a moment that they're doing it next to their colleagues) is both disgusting and compellingly human. Add to this the greasy, dirty shots of tunnels (one of which looks particularly vulvic) and there's an interesting interplay between the disgusting and the erotic.
What is done technically with this film is really beautiful and the story Holland tells is as amazing and heroic as any from the Holocaust. Still, I feel there is a slight lack of thematic interest for me in what is shown. Yes, this is a great film, but something about it feels a bit like just another harrowing story of survival. Like a beautiful impressionist painting, there is not much to dislike about this film, but it still leaves me wanting a bit more to chew on. Perhaps this is unfair and I should merely appreciate a good story told well, but I still feel a bit less than totally thrilled.
Stars: 3 of 4
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