Robert Marshall, the author of All the King's Men, collected the memoirs of survivors from the Ukrainian city of Lvov and combining them with his own research wrote a trying account of a group of Jews who spent 14 months in 1943-44 hiding in the city's sewer system. His book, "In the Sewers of Lvov: A Heroic Story of Survival from the Holocaust" recounts the lives of twenty people, including two children and a pregnant woman, descending into their own Inferno--the ledges, caverns, and underground rivers of the catacombs beneath the city streets. How they coped with the feces, the rats, the darkness, the deaths of half their numbers, even with delivery and infanticide, is an unbelievably cruel documentation of truth. Marshall dedicated his book to the memory of Leopold Socha, a former criminal who became a Ukrainian sewer worker and made it his life's atonement to save a few Jews out of the murdered millions. Tragically, soon after he was able to bring "his Jews" back to daylight, Socha was killed in an accident. This extraordinary story has been adapted for the screen by David F. Shamoon and is recreated for us by the genius of Agnieszka Holland's direction.
The film is dark not only in content but also in the lack of light: most of the two and a half hour film takes place in the underground sewers where little light is available. The acting is immensely fine - especially Robert Wieckiewicz as Leopold Socha, the Catholic, petty thief, dissolute Polish sewer worker who saved the lives of a dozen Jews by hiding them underground for 14 months, Kinga Preis as his sympathetic wife Wanda, Krzysztof Skonieczny as Socha's partner Szczepek (Socha and Szczepek began their desperate business knowing the Nazis would pay $500 for each Jew they turn in but they in turn bargain with conman Jewish leader Mundek (Benno Fürmann) and for an even steeper price, they provide food and other resources to the underground Jews living in the sewers. The actors who portray the Jews - adults and children - are equally superb. The cinematography is by Jolanta Dylewska and the spare but touching musical score is by Antoni Lazarkiewicz.
Though Holland takes us through the terror and misery these people suffered, she adds at the end of the film some facts that are appalling. In addition to offering the numbers of the Jews slaughtered during the war and the eventual division of lands and homes destroyed by the Nazis, she adds some facts that are heartwarming, such as in 1978, Socha and his wife were awarded the title "Righteous among the Nations" by Yad Vashem in Israel.
This is a very powerful film, brilliant in every aspect and one that deserves very wide attention to the peoples of the world. In Polish, Ukrainian, Yiddish, German with English subtitles.
Grady Harp
The film is dark not only in content but also in the lack of light: most of the two and a half hour film takes place in the underground sewers where little light is available. The acting is immensely fine - especially Robert Wieckiewicz as Leopold Socha, the Catholic, petty thief, dissolute Polish sewer worker who saved the lives of a dozen Jews by hiding them underground for 14 months, Kinga Preis as his sympathetic wife Wanda, Krzysztof Skonieczny as Socha's partner Szczepek (Socha and Szczepek began their desperate business knowing the Nazis would pay $500 for each Jew they turn in but they in turn bargain with conman Jewish leader Mundek (Benno Fürmann) and for an even steeper price, they provide food and other resources to the underground Jews living in the sewers. The actors who portray the Jews - adults and children - are equally superb. The cinematography is by Jolanta Dylewska and the spare but touching musical score is by Antoni Lazarkiewicz.
Though Holland takes us through the terror and misery these people suffered, she adds at the end of the film some facts that are appalling. In addition to offering the numbers of the Jews slaughtered during the war and the eventual division of lands and homes destroyed by the Nazis, she adds some facts that are heartwarming, such as in 1978, Socha and his wife were awarded the title "Righteous among the Nations" by Yad Vashem in Israel.
This is a very powerful film, brilliant in every aspect and one that deserves very wide attention to the peoples of the world. In Polish, Ukrainian, Yiddish, German with English subtitles.
Grady Harp