Nonureva Really Surprised!

InformationRap This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

Deanna There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.

Zandra The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

Bene Cumb The fate of Jews during World War II has seen wide depiction (sometimes too wide, in comparison with many other small nations persecuted and deported) in the movies of noted filmmakers; Agnieszka Holland is no exception here. Based on true events, the film focuses on Leopold Socha, a sewer worker in the then Polish city of Lwów who used his knowledge and of the city's sewer system and inventiveness to shelter a group of Jews escaped from the city ghetto. The script and the events seem logical and realistic, but they are difficult to follow at times as they are happening in dark environment, and faces-names can be easily confused. Perhaps that was the reason that leading actors were no distinctive to me - apart from Benno Fürmann as Mundek perhaps - and the triangle of suffering Jews / unpredictable Poles / sadistic Nazis was often too blunt. The length could have been shorter as well, some protracted scenes neither accentuated the mood nor provided additional value to the course of events. All in all, W ciemności is good, but, in my opinion, Escape from Sobibor, The Pianist, and Die Fälscher, for example, have more novel approach and different angle to proceed. As for Holland herself, I find her Europa, Europa from 1991 better, i.e. more dynamic and versatile.

phd_travel This is a realistic and well made true story of a Polish sewage worker saving Jewish people from the purge of the ghetto in Lvov or Lviv city during WWII. The production and cinematography are good. It doesn't have a cheap feel that some Eastern European productions had in the past.It's a true story so there is no point criticizing the events that took place. It's about saving a smaller group of people than Schindler's List. It's not fair to compare it to the larger scale Holocaust epics. It was more on the scale of "The Pianist".The screenplay is realistic showing both sides of the story. The difficulties and demands on the Polish saviour are quite illuminating.The nudity and love making are a bit excessive but I guess they wanted to show everything.Worth a watch.

tieman64 Agnieszka Holland directs "In Darkness". The plot? Deep within the rat invested sewers of Poland, Jewish adults and children spend 14 months hiding. They are aided by Leopold Socha, a Catholic sewer worker. He's your classic "Oskar Schindler" character, initially motivated by greed but begrudgingly morphing into a saviour who risks life, lungs and limbs so that others may one day live free. By the film's end, Socha's Jews are able to exit the sewers, the darkness of the German occupation over and so the darkness of life below ground.Like "The Grey Zone", Holland's "In Darkness" is yet another Holocaust movie which draws clunky, symbolic linkages between literal shadows and the dark immoralities of the Holocaust. And like most Holocaust movies, "Darkness'" tone alternates from moments of simple sentimentality to even simpler brutality. There is no insight here, only a kind of middlebrow art which reduces suffering and history to easy movements.The film was based on Krystyna Ghiger's memoir, "The Girl in the Green Sweater: A Life in Holocaust's Shadow". Agnieszka herself had one Catholic and one Jewish parent, the film's ethical/religious split perhaps echoing her own childhood.At its best, "In Darkness" draws parallels between the sewers and life above ground (no space is sacred, someone is always eavesdropping and everyone is always at risk of being interrupted, discovered or walked in on). Elsewhere Holland does well to show how the filthy sewers gradually become prisons and then tombs. For the most part, though, the film is very weak. Its script is obvious, its poorly shot, Agnieszka can't convey any sense of claustrophobia, of time's passage, or even the squalid conditions of life below ground. Compare with Andrzej Wajda's "Kanal", which likewise attempted to portray life within Poland's underground networks.4/10 - Worth one viewing. See Gavras' "Amen", Holland's own "Europa Europa" and Vittorio de Sica's "The Garden of the Finzi-Continis".

denis888 The Agnieszka Holland production seems to be a rather good effort to show the fate of Lwow Jews trapped in the ghetto and getting their way out through the sewer system. Some locals help, some do not. That could be a great and very exciting story. It was not. Mrs. Holland did not fulfill the main goal. Her film tends to be very prolonged, languid, too slow and too dirty. Well, yes, was is dirty, but then, do we need so much nudity on screen? Some foul language does not seem to sound natural here, too, and yes, some scenes are too slow and too blurry in delivery. Beno Fuhrmann is a great actor, but here he is not at his peak. His part is OK, but not driving, as well as some more. The film is really OK, but this is the one that you watch and then never repeat or remember much.