In Darkness (2011)

This film is incredibly powerful and I'm glad I was forced to watch it for a class that I am currently taking.
Though most hail Schindler's List as the best film about the Holocaust, this one deserves just as much attention.
Here, a sewer worker, while making his rounds, stumbles onto some Jews trying to hide out down there. Leopold Socha (Robert Wieckiewicz) and his assistant decide, for a handsome fee, to hide Jews down there, but only ten or eleven can hide. The wealthy Chiger (Herbert Knaup) is among the select few, naturally because he is paying for it. His wife (Maria Schrader) and two young children are also there. Klara Keller (Angieszka Grochowska) is also chosen, along with the man who came up with the idea, Mundek (Benno Furmann). A man, cheating on his wife goes down with his lover while his daughter and wife refuse to join him. Others are there as well.
The film is not simple, with Socha putting his own life and the life of his wife and daughter in danger and for what? As he says, the Jews aren't even grateful, they just demand more. Only after the Chiger children get lost in the sewers and he returns them to their frantic parents do they say Thank You. Eventually, he even does this for free, continuing to provide them with food and fresh clothing. Complications arise, men leave, but they don't get that far, as they are shot. Chaja, the mistress (Julia Kijowska) becomes pregnant, though she tries to keep it from the others. Klara is happy about this, saying that it will be everyone's baby, causing Mundek to say, the only funny line in the whole film really, that two parents aren't bad enough. Then Mundek escapes and a Nazi dies because he tries to go to the work camp to find Klara's sister, who decided to go there instead of living in the sewers, Socha nearly kills him because of this.  While away, Chaja has the baby in a grossly realistic scene, with blood and everything. The baby is a boy, but the crying puts the whole group in danger.
Socha discusses the situation with his wife (Kinga Preis). She is happy to hear that it is a boy and comes up with a plan. They will tell people that the baby is her brother's. But when Socha goes down to tell the group the good news, he learns that she smothered the baby, causing me to gasp. I couldn't believe it. The look on Socha's face says it all, he is likewise devastated.
Life continues, slowly and more challenges arise. During his daughter's communion, Socha leaves to rescue the Jews because of the huge downpour but runs into trouble. One of his Nazi friends insists that he show him the gas lines underneath because they are trying to plant bombs to throw off the Germans. Fortunately for Socha and the Jews, the Nazi drowns. Socha nearly dies and returns home only to find that his wife left him, though she does return. The Jews survived, but barely.
The Jews survive and Socha takes great pride in the fact that it was all his doing. Unfortunately, his life ends in May of 1945. He is run over by a Russian tank saving his daughter from being run over. Someone says at his funeral that he was punished for helping the Jews, as if we need God to hate each other, as the film says at the end.
The film is not perfect, with a crazy shower (rain pouring into the sewer) sex scene after Mundek returns home from his quick stint in the concentration camp and his cliche line to Klara, "Without you, I have no life and I plan on living a long life", but the good and realistic far outweigh the bad.
The scene that sticks with me is in the beginning when the Nazis pull off part of a beard of a Jewish man, causing me to cringe and nearly spas. There is another scene when Mundek goes off to the concentration camp where the Nazis make the Jews literally crawl on the ground, like dogs.
The characters are incredibly realistic and the director got her wish, portraying Jews are real people with flaws. She doesn't like how they are normally portrayed as being perfect with everyone around them as bad, though that was basically the cause. The film is hard to watch, with naked women running through the woods before they are shot. No one is perfect, just like us. Teh film is nearly two and a half hours long, but it went rather quickly. Watch it, I highly recommend it. Grade: A