Tag: poland

A REAL PAIN -Review

This weekend sees the release of a film that is an interesting variation on the “road” movies, and I’m not speaking of the beloved series that sent Bob Hope and Bing Crosby clowning and singing across the globe for nearly 20 years. Although, this film does spotlight an engaging if somewhat mismatched duo. And it can be quite funny, meshing with moments of despair and heartache. Naturally the old “fish out of water” tropes arise since neither character speaks the locale’s language, nor are they versed in the customs. In that way, there’s also an element of the old travelogues as we take in the land’s quaint beauty and “old world” charms. But “the sights” never distract us from the emotions, and the complex family relationship at the heart of A REAL PAIN.


At the story’s start we meet the first half of that duo, David Kaplan (Jesse Eisenberg) as heads to the airport for a vacation away from his beloved wife and son back in NYC, where he works in media advertising (mainly those banner ads just a bit above this post). During the long cab ride he’s leaving lots of messages (“C’mon, pick up!”) for his cousin, the “in between gigs” thirtysomething (they were born mere weeks apart) Benji Kaplan (Kieran Culkin), who lives a couple of hours away from the city. The two reunite outside the gate of their flight to Poland, the birthplace of their beloved, recently deceased grandmother. The long trek gives them a chance to catch up as we observe that David is rather introverted and reflective while Benji’s in an unpredictable “wild card” going from outgoing and gregarious to dark and moody. And we find out that they’ve purchased two spots in a guided tour group of the country. After landing, they take the train to their hotel where they meet the rest of their “party” It’s headed by their British academic guide, James (Will Sharpe), who introduces them to the other tourists. There’s an older married couple, Diane (Liza Sadoovy) and Mark (Daniel Oreskes), a middle-aged recent divorcee Marcia (Jennifer Grey), and an emigree from Rhawnda, Eloge (Kurt Egyiawan). David and Benji will travel with them for most of the tour and “break away” to explore their grandmother’s birth home in a remote village. As the group sees the Polish architecture and historical sights (including several sculptures and a WWII concentration camp), the cousins explore their personal history as they attempt to repair a tight childhood bond that has been nearly severed by adulthood, forming new families, and deep internal turmoil. Will this trip bring David and Benji closer or is this a final reunion?

Though he’s being touted by the film’s marketing team as a supporting player, the story truly showcases the superb Culkin as, really, the title role. Benjy can be painful, either unintentionally cruel or just abrasive, yet somehow he draws us in rather than repels. Culkin’s expert comic timing meshes with Benjy’s often “no filter” verbal streaming, though he also conveys a real sweetness in the role’s vulnerability. He’s the puppy that shreds your favorite slippers in that it’s tough to unleash your anger at him. Perhaps this is part of the reason that Culkin’s been scooping up so many TV awards in the last few years. Providing the counterbalance, AKA the voice of reason and a classic comedy “straight man”, is the intense but also endearing Eisenberg, who eases up on the twitchy, rattled line delivery to make David a real caring brother to Benjy, while also taking the reigns as the parent trying to put him back on the right path, even providing a much-needed lifeline (as we learn of recent rifts in the relationship). Even though they don’t share the same parents, this is an “iron bond” and the two actors really make us believe in them as more than cousins. The quartet of fellow travelers is solid (nice to see you back in the movies, Ms. Grey), led by the terrific Sharpe who also becomes a great comic foil for Benjy as his pre-planned spiel is often disrupted, though we get the feeling that James really enjoys being rattled to the point of emotionally engaging with his background’s legacy.

Back to Mr. Eisenberg, big kudos on his sophomore feature directing effort. As with WHEN YOU FINISH SAVING THE WORLD, he also crafted the screenplay, though he’s tasked with acting in this one. And he really delivers, giving us a wonderful character study of the two men, while also sending us into the rich history of Poland and its people. Plus it’s the first time a narrative film has shot inside a concentration camp, providing a somber respectful view of Majdanek. Everything adds to the story arc of the Kaplans whether they’re frantically catching a train (lots of rail travel) or just strolling into their adored granny’s neighborhood. It’s also impressive that Eisenberg gets such great dramatic dynamics between himself and Culkin (there’s a focused filmmaker). As the holidays begin to dominate the final weeks of the year, moviegoers wanting to explore another look at family bonds (and engage in some virtual vacationing) should make a real effort to see A REAL PAIN.

3.5 Out of 4

A REAL PAIN is now playing in select theatres

TREASURE – Review

(L-R) Stephen Fry, Lena Dunham, and Stefan Zbigniew Zamachowski in TREASURE. Photo Credit: Bleecker Street and FilmNation

Lena Dunham and Stephen Fry play a daughter and her Holocaust-survivor father, on a trip to his native Poland in the 1990s, in the dramedy TREASURE. The trip is the daughter’s idea, and her plan is to learn about her family history, something her father and late mother always refused to talk about. Angry and frustrated at her parents’ refusal to share anything about their past, she plans to visit sites related to dad’s family and life to learn about the family she knows nothing about. Her father has steadfastly refused to talk about it, and with the death of her mother, she figured going to their home country of Poland was the only way. Unsurprisingly, revisiting Poland is not something dad wanted to do but he goes along, pretty much uninvited, to “protect her,” as he puts it. What he is protecting her from is a little unclear.

This pair couldn’t be more different in temperament, and have a prickly relationship. The daughter, Ruth (Lena Dunham), is grim, humorless, and no-nonsense, a New York-based music journalist, a vegan with rigid habits, who doesn’t seem to enjoy travel and worries about her tight budget. Dad Edek (Stephen Fry) is a joyful, outgoing fellow, who stops to flirt with most women he meets along the way and tells everyone they meet that his daughter is rich and famous, although she is neither. He refuses to be serious, at least on the surface, and Dad does his best to distract his daughter, to delay things, waste time, and send her on the wrong track, even trick her, to keep her from her mission. He is sometimes helped by a local taxi driver (Stefan Zbigniew Zamachowski) that the pair have picked up at the airport and turned into a kind of tour guide, after dad refuses to board the train his daughter had booked for the trip.

Julia von Heinz wrote and directs this dramedy about family, memory and Poland in WWII and in post-communist 1990s. The story is emotional, and often funny. At first, the situation seems a bit forced, contrived and awkward, but as the story unfolds, the film improves and becomes more believable. Fry and Dunham soften and deepen their characters, and both father and daughter work through some issues. Zamachowski as the driver provides a mediator between battling father and daughter, and adds his own comedy touches or serves as a comic foil, while supplying information about the post-communist Poland as they travel.

Ruth is there to investigate her family’s history, not to have fun, so she goes about his trip like a woman on a mission, or working an assignment. But her trip does include some educational tours, mostly because she has so few clues from her parents, both to learn about Poland and the Holocaust. The film does note how odd it is to have such tours of sites like Auschwitz. As admirable as it is to educate people, with the aim of “never again,” it is still seems strange and unsettling to have them as tourist sites. However, Ruth is mostly there to learn about her family. She has done some research and also visits places like a family cemetery and a one-time family home. But the closer she gets to the family sites, the more smiling, fast-talking dad seems desperate to derail her search.

Both Dunham and Fry are good, with Fry especially charming and funny. Early one, some odd-couple humor feels forced, but as things go along, the film improves as Fry’s and Dunham’s characters become more relaxed. Fry’s Edek is quite a plotter but slowly becomes less a hindrance, even revealing why he has been so secretive all these years. The film touches on true-history subjects, such as giving insight on how neighbors turned on their Jewish friends and neighbors, exploiting the Nazi occupation for their own advantage. Eventually the meaning of the title is revealed, in a twist that brings father and daughter together at last.

TREASURE debuts streaming on demand on Tuesday, July 30.

RATING: 3 out of 4 stars

MY NAME IS SARA – Review

Zuzanna Surowy as Sara/Manya, in MY NAME IS SARA. Courtesy of Strand Releasing

How many 13-year-olds have the self-discipline to pretend to be someone else for two years, without once revealing the truth even to those closest to her? MY NAME IS SARA is a tense historical survival drama that unfolds more like a thriller, which recounts the true story of 13-year-old Sara Goralnik who concealed her Jewish identity in Nazi-occupied Ukraine for two years, even from the Ukrainian Orthodox farmers with whom she is living.

There is a particularly timely element to this true story film as it is set in western Ukraine, part of which was in Poland when World War II started and part of which was in the Soviet Union, but all of which was occupied by Germany when the story takes place. The film not only tells Sara Goralnik’s harrowing personal story but gives us insights into the plight of Ukrainian farmers during the war, farmers who were brutalized and exploited by the occupying Nazis but also subject to raids from partisans hiding in the woods. As much as they might support the partisans goals in fighting the Nazis, the farmers faced starvation by repeated raids from both sides.

MY NAME IS SARA feels more like a thriller than a historical drama or biography, although it is also those. During World War II, many Jews tried to survive by posing as Christians, and fear of discovery gives such hidden identity stories an inherent tension, but MY NAME IS SARA is exceptional. Not only is young Sara hiding from the Nazis but she has to conceal her Jewish identify from the very family she is living with. The Ukrainian Orthodox Christian farming family is not helping her to hide – or at least not knowingly. In some ways, they were as much a threat to her safety as the Nazis occupying the nearby Ukrainian town, since they not only share their neighbors’ antisemitic attitudes but they were also driven by fear, as the Nazis brutally punish anyone sheltering Jewish refugees. The risk of discovery is ever-present and Sara has no one she can trust, yet must appear calm at all times, a challenge for anyone but all the more so for someone so young.

Sara (newcomer Zuzanna Surowy) and her family lived in Korets in the Poland when the Nazis invaded. Before the war, Korets had a large Jewish population that was well-integrated with the Polish Catholic and Orthodox Christian Ukrainian ones. As the film opens, Sara and her older brother Moishe (Konrad Cichon) are hiding in the woods, after fleeing the ghetto where their parents and two younger brothers are trapped. They are attempting to cross the border into the Soviet Union, an area the Nazis also occupy, with the goal of reaching a farm owned by an old non-Jewish woman that their parents have paid to shelter them. But as soon as they arrive, Moishe realizes they can’t stay, as the nervous woman is likely to betray them. “You would do better without me,” he tells his younger sister, noting that her appearance, with light-colored eyes and hair, makes it easier for her to pass as non-Jewish than his more obviously Jewish features do. The next morning, Sara makes the tough choice to leave while her brother sleeps.

After making her way through the woods, the hungry and tired Sara emerges in a field where an Ukrainian farmer, Ivan (Pawel Królikowski), and his son Grisha (Piotr Nerlewski) are working. She tells Ivan she is looking for work, that her name is Manya Romanchuk and she has run away from a troubled home life in Korets. The farmer eyes her with suspicion, then asks if she is Jewish, which she denies. He demands she make the sign of the cross herself as proof she is Christian. Satisfied with her response, the Ukrainians take her to the farm of Ivan’s brother Pavlo (Eryk Lubos) and his younger wife Nadya (Michalina Olszanska) where Sara can work as a nanny for their two young sons. At the farm, Sara is challenged again to prove she is not Jewish and, again, passes their tests, although her new employers still remain wary.

While Sara faces constant threat of discovery, she also learns things about her Ukrainian farmer employers that can help her. They hate the Nazi occupiers too, and are not so fond of the Russians, with memories of the Soviet famine of the 1930s lingering. She also learns that the husband and wife each have secrets, and each tries to enlist her support in their troubled marriage.

Director Steven Oritt ramps up the tension in this film in a series of nail-biting scenes, and the threat is always in our minds. The true-story is aided by the fact that Oritt interviewed the real Sara Goralnik Shapiro extensively before her death in 2018, information that David Himmelstein used in writing his script. As well as concealing her identity during the war, the real Sara also kept the secret of her war-time experience from her family until late in life. Although it is just being released now into theaters, the drama was made in 2019 with the support of Steven Spielberg’s USC Shoah Foundation and with the real Sara’s son, Mickey Shapiro, serving as executive producer. It has played several film festivals, including the 2020 Miami Jewish Film Festival, where it won the Audience Award for Best Narrative Film, and the 2019 Warsaw Jewish Film Festival, where it won the David Camera Grand Prix Award. Oritt has made a few documentaries but this is his dramatic feature film debut.

The film was shot on location in Poland with a Polish crew and with a Polish, German, Russian and Ukrainian cast, lending authenticity. It has lovely cinematography by Marian Prokop, who took advantage of the pretty, period Polish locations, aided by nice art direction. The acting is good, with young Zuzanna Surowy particularly impressive as Sara, particularly considering her lack of acting experience. Her still, sad face has a inherent underlying steel to it which serves the film well. Often when the character is asked a fraught question or faces a situation that threatens to expose her, Suwovy’s face remains still and unchanged for a beat, before she smiles and pretends to be pleased or cooperative, a choice that has the effect of making the viewer hold their breathe for a moment, increasing the tension more than one might expect. Director Oritt does a masterful job with keeping tension high overall, without ever wearing us out with the suspense.

As the story unfolds, what is most astonishing is Sara’s ability to pass as Ukrainian Orthodox Christian. Time and again, her employers test her, suspicious that she may be Jewish, asking her to cross herself, eat pork and even recite Christian prayers. Although we eventually learn the reason for her knowledge of Orthodox ways, we remain impressed that one so young can so coolly pull off the impersonation. Beyond the religious testing, there are other threats to expose her, including that the village she fled is not so far away, and she runs the risk she might encounter someone who knows her.

The film also periodically reminds us of the deadly price the Nazis imposed on those who did shelter Jews. When another Jewish girl turns up at the farm, Sara tries to help without giving herself away, another reminder of the constant danger she is in.

There is much to admire about this film but not all is perfect. Some of the exposition is unclear, and we are not entirely certain what is happening between Sara and Pavlo, although he is clearly attracted to her. The film also has the characters speak in English when they are presumably speaking in Ukrainian but uses subtitles for other languages, a choice that some viewers might find awkward.

All in all, MY NAME IS SARA is a worthy drama, an impressive true story of surviving the Holocaust, by a teen girl on her own, forced to conceal her identity and live by her wits, told with a thriller vibe, and shot on location with fine cinematography and acting.

MY NAME IS SARA, in English and Polish, German and Russian with English subtitles, opens Friday, Aug. 19, at Marcus Des Peres Cinema and other theaters.

COLD WAR – Review

Joanna Kulig as Zula in Pawel Pawlikowski’s COLD WAR. Photo courtesy of Amazon Studios (c)

The Oscar-nominated COLD WAR is a brilliant, beautiful film about a passionate romance between two mismatched people, set against the backdrop of communist Poland and the Cold War. Shot in gorgeous black and white, director Pawel Pawlikowski’s Polish-language drama traces the ill-fated, incendiary love affair of two musicians through fifteen years, from their meeting in 1949 communist Poland through the decay of Polish communism throughout the Cold War, as the couple cross back and forth over what was called the Iron Curtain. The story is inspired by the director’s own parents, with the characters sharing their names.

COLD WAR is a compelling romantic drama is full of tragic twists of fate and history, about two people of differing background and personality yet bound by irresistible attraction, all further complicated by the impossible situation of the times in which they lived. Tale is brought to vibrant life by the two appealing actors playing the star-crossed couple, aided by a fabulous jazz-driven score and beautiful photography.

Pawlikowski’s previous film IDA won the 2018 Oscar for foreign-language film, and COLD WAR is among this year’s nominees for that Oscar, as well as winning Pawlikowski the Best Director award at Cannes. Like IDA, the director uses lush black and white photography to tell a historical story that blends the personal and the political. The film is short, a mere 89 minutes, and skips ahead in time between scenes, leaving us wanting to know more. At the center is the star-crossed love story, inspired by the director’s parents, with a charismatic pair of actors whose vibrant performances

Wiktor (Tomasz Kot) is the musical expert and piano accompanist of an ethnographic team collecting Polish folk songs and dances in rural areas. Ethnographer Irena (the excellent Agata Kulesza) is not only recording these vanishing mountain folk songs but she and Wiktor have been tasked by the Polish government to recruit young people from mountain villages for a new school devoted to the preservation of rural folk music. The plan is to train these young people for a program of traditional rural songs and dances, to be presented on stage around Poland, as a way to promote national pride and patriotism.

Blonde teen Zula (Joanna Kulig) is among the young people auditioning with folk songs or dances. Although it quickly becomes clear she is only pretending to be a mountain girl, Wiktor is struck by her potential star-power more than her voice, and persuades Irena to accept her in the program, even though she is not “authentic.” Wiktor and Irena stick by their choice, even when it comes out Zula is on parole for attacking her father. “He mistook me for my mother so I showed him the difference with a knife,” she coolly states when asked about her crime, a statement that illustrates both the dry wit and strong spirit of the ambitious Zula.

Overseeing the project is a Communist Party operative, Kaczmarek (an oily Borys Szyc), who gives ideological speeches to the young recruits and also keeps an eye on Wiktor and Irena. Irena and Wiktor set up an academy devoted to folk music in a rundown mansion, and start training the recruits for a patriotic production of traditional rural Polish dances and songs. Despite their differences in age, education, background and temperament, Wiktor and Zula are romantically attracted.

Zula proves a fast-learner and quickly ascends to a star position in the folk music production that academy tours around Poland. The folk music troupe becomes a hit in the Communist world, with Zula as its star, and they are invited to tour Russia and East Germany. Success brings pressure from Communist Party officials to incorporate propaganda pieces about land reform and praising Stalin into the folk music program. Alarmed at the violation of her program’s mission of preserving authentic folk culture, Irena gently points out that Polish peasants did not sing about such matters and there are no traditional folk songs about land reform. She is overruled, and at the next performance, we see a grim-faced Irena watching her troupe perform a musical number lauding Stalin under a larger banner of his image.

The writing is on the wall. While the troupe is performing in East Berlin, Wiktor tries to persuade Zula to defect to the West but she hesitates. In the communist world, Zula is a star but she is uncertain what awaits in the West. Divided by the Iron Curtain, neither can let go of the other, and they begin a back-and-forth relationship across the Cold War’s divide.

This mismatched couple would have challenges in any case but their difficulties are amplified tragically by the twist of fate that places them in the midst of the Cold War and at it’s most dangerous boundaries. The story ranges across Europe, from Berlin to Italy to Poland to Yugoslavia. The intersection of obsessive, passionate love and political conflict and intrigue heightens the film’s tensions to thriller levels. Pawlikowski avoids a pat sentimental romantic ending, giving us something far more striking.

The acting is superb, and the charismatic leads are one of three strong elements that make this film. Tomasz Kot is perfect as the romantic leading man but it is Joanna Kulig who is truly riveting on screen, as the complicated Zula. The characters are so appealing that we root for them and their love, even when both of them behave badly. In what may be a breakout, Joanna Kulig is fascinating to watch, by turns a petulant, mood woman, a scheming teen and a devoted lover. Her appearance seems to shift, from poised beauty to plain peasant. The obsession both characters feel draws them together repeatedly, a force we can sense on screening. Yet once together, their strong wills and differing views lead the to pick at each other and constantly bicker. Yet, Wiktor at one point in the film calls Zula the “woman of his life.” Sometimes tragic events separate them, sometimes their own temperaments do, but neither can entirely leave. The tension and the passion keep the audience riveted.

With its short running time, the story is very spare, and there are moments when we long for more details. Still, the director gives us enough to understand the couple and paints events, political and romantic, in an effective, impressionistic style.

If nothing else, COLD WAR is a visual delight, one of this year’s two Oscar-nominated films to use black and white photography to great dramatic effect, the other being ROMA. Pawlikowski shows off his considerable skill for the image on screen with artistically-framed black and white imagery and the use of an old-fashioned aspect ratio suits the historical period. The director to mesmerize the audience with the sheer beauty of the visuals, often centrally framed or with the characters set in crowded locations. In one disorienting scene, we see Wiktor and Irena at a crowded reception after a performance, only to realize the presence of a mirrored wall is distorting what we think we see, a nice visual allusion to illusions.

Another delight of COLD WAR is its strong use of music, particularly jazz. The characters at the center are musicians, and the score is filled with music ranging from classical, to Polish folk songs, to jazz. Jazz was forbidden music in communist Poland, heightening its appeal to the classically-trained Wiktor, who at one point is eking out a living playing in a jazz band in Paris. The starving artist romance of Wiktor’s spare apartment and marginal existence escapes once-poor Zula, who prefers her Soviet stardom. One of the Polish folk music show’s most popular centerpieces is a traditional Polish love song about star-crossed lovers. It becomes Zula’s signature song, one that appears again and again, in various forms, throughout the film. As the film progresses through time, the music evolves, from the classical and folk music to the jazz of 1950s Paris to early rock and roll.

COLD WAR is a remarkable, haunting film about a fiery but doomed romance against the backdrop of history, a film greatly fired up by the two excellent romantic leads and its jazz score.

COLD WAR, in Polish with English subtitles, opens Friday, Jan. 25, at Landmark’s Plaza Frontenac Cinema.

RATING: 5 out of 5 stars

IDA – The Review

ida

The new drama IDA concerns a young woman seemingly eager and prepared to forge ahead and continue on her life’s journey, a trip she has been certain of for most of her existence. But, as is often the case, one must first re-trace your steps in a way to see the beginning of the road, n order to continue on with no qualms or regrets. As the film opens we meet a girl on the verge of adulthood living in a convent in Poland at the beginning of the 1960’s. Anna (Agata Trzebuchowska) will soon be taking her vows and fully join the sisterhood, but first the Mother Superior sends her on a task. Anna was raised at the church-run orphanage since she was an infant. Anna’s only living relative, an aunt, has not responded to invitations to visit her niece. Before the ceremony, Anna will board a bus for a nearby city and meet her only kin. When she arrives at her aunt’s apartment building the next morning, Anna is nearly brushed aside by a man hurriedly leaving the place. That man was the previous evening’s entertainment for Wanda (Agata Kulesza), a hard-drinking, chain-smoking local court judge. Wanda informs Anna that her birth name is Ida, and her parents were Jewish (and killed during the occupation of World War II)! The surly Wanda dismisses her visitor and tells her to head back to the convent. But after a day hearing cases and a look through the old photos, Wander changes her mind and races down to the bus station. Seeing the young woman waiting on a bench, Wanda tells Ida that she will drive her to her birth village where they will find out what exactly happened to her parents and locate their grave site. They hit the road for a journey that will be one of discovery for Ida and of regrets and past horrors for Wanda.

So, basically this is a two-person road trip drama with the oddest of couples. The beautiful Trzebuchowska pratically glows on screen with her headpiece making her look as if she just stepped out of a Vermeer painting. Her face is nearly a blank slate that acts as a screen for the people she encounters to project their feelings and fears upon. For some she’s scorned for her simplistic beliefs while others plead to be given a blessing from her. It’s the more passive role which aids in magnifying the bravado work of Kulesza as Judge Wanda, who enters a scene like a bull in a china shop. No tip-toeing around for her, she interrogates with the ferocity of a pitbull, with each question a bludgeon to get at her prize, the truth. But it seems the more she learns, the more vulnerable this force of nature becomes, oozing her life-force as she re-opens old, scarred-over wounds. Wanda never completely opens up to her niece as she saves her smiles for those men hovering around her at the bar. Yes, it is the flashier of the two roles and Kulesza knows it. She brings an urgency, a vitality, to every scene and is the film’s fiercely beating heart.

Director Pawel Pawlikowski guides these women expertly through the dreary cold landscape, made even more bleak by the superb, stark black and white cinematography and lack of music score. He composes the scenes like an illustrator with the actors often occupying the bottom third of the screen, dwarfed by the run-down buildings and barren trees, the fates staring down at these mere mortals. Despite the somewhat downbeat subject, the film is briskly paced at a taut mere 80 minutes with no padding or fluff. The end of the journey and its aftermath will surprise and stun. For some of the characters, the truth does not set them free. A powerful and engaging drama, IDA is a haunting tale sure to linger long after you return to the Technicolor world.

4 Out of 5

IDA opens everywhere and screens exclusively in the St. Louis area at Landmark’s Plaza Frontenac Cinemas

idaposter

 

 

IN DARKNESS – The Review

IN DARKNESS was one of the recent Best Foreign Film nominees at the Academy Awards ( Iran took home Oscar for A SEPERATION ). It tells another tale of European Jews being helped to evade the forces of Nazi Germany, a story related in previous films like THE DIARY OF ANNE FRANK to SCHINDLER’S LIST.  DARKNESS proves to be a worthy addition to these dramas. It’s no dry history lesson, but an involving, suspenseful thriller that has as many nail-biting moments as the last three or four big-budget action extravaganzas. You’ll leave the theatre having learned something and perhaps feeling invigorated. When you think about what these folks had to go through, the air outside the exit doors may smell just a little sweeter than when you went in.

The main focus of the story is Leopold Socha, a sewer worker in Lvov ( former Poland ). He and his co-worker are trying to make ends meet and not incur the ire of the occupying German forces during the early 1940’s. Socha even robs the homes of Jews who have been re-located to camps ( they’re interrupted during their haul in an early scene ). Making his rounds he discovers that some Jewish families have built trap-doors in their apartments that allow them to drop down below the buildings and hide from the soldiers who would load them up in trucks. Sosha sees a way to take advantage of their plight ( and bring a bit more home to his beleaguered missus ). He’ll escort them down into the sewers under the streets and take them to a small spot that few others know about . And he’ll bring them food until the soldiers have left the city. He’ll do all that for a nominal weekly fee ( not counting the initial entrance spots that he collects before the trip down below ). The refugees have little choice, but to put their faith ( and funds ) in the hands of the mercenary city worker. Days drag into weeks, then into months. Socha tries to stay several steps ahead of the authorities ( who’ve heard rumors of people hiding away down there) while his charges try to hold on to their sanity as they live out their mole-like existence with no apparent relief in sight.

The film’s greatest strength is the humanity of all the characters in this unbelievable, but very true story. The refugees are not stoic, noble heroes, but real people with all their faults and foibles. One man carries on an affair with a woman while his wife and child sleep nearby ( or so he believes ). The sewer-dwellers bicker about their class standings and education (  the college professor is constantly on the defense ). On the other side, one of Socha’s old pals has fallen in with the occupiers and tries to get his old buddy to help him track down unwanteds. As for the other townspeople, many decry and bemoan the treatment of their Jewish neighbors, while others grumble, ” Good riddance. About time. ” ( the Nazis get to act on these citizen’s jealousy and hatred ). Of course, the character with the greatest arc is Socha. Originally there to make a few quick bucks off them, after a few shouting matches ( they just don’t appreciate him! ), he becomes sympathetic and even parental towards his hideaways ( like Schindler, he calls the ” my Jews ” ). Kudos to the film makers for not over-emphasizing the filth of the sewers ( no ” Smell-a-Vision “, thank heaven. They also crank up the tension when the small group expands and later when a deadly flash flood strikes ( the flooding tunnel has been used since the early silents, but this sequence adds another layer of thrills as the refugees try to keep out of sight ). This is an incredibly well-made motion picture that helps shed a well-deserved spotlight on a greedy little con-man who opened his heart and became a great historical hero in spite of himself.

Overall Rating: 4.5 Out of 5 Stars