A Polish nurse shelters Jews in the cellar of the home where she is
employed as housekeeper to a Nazi officer.
Review by
Benjamin Poole
Directed by: Louise Archambault
Starring: Sophie Nélisse, Dougray Scott, Andrzej Seweryn, Eliza Rycembel, Maciej Nawrocki, Aleksandar Milicevic,
Tomasz Tyndyk, Nela Maciejewska
They talk about superhero fatigue, so how about a film centred upon a true
paladin, one internationally recognised for their courage and defiance of
a cruel and totalitarian system and who physically existed? Irena Gut was
a displaced Polish (and, as we know, best not to fuck with the Poles)
student nurse in the nazi (I refuse to capitalise) occupied town of Radom.
Irena stole food from the SS infested hotel where she worked to share with
the ghetto, got the persecuted across the border, and, phenomenally,
harboured 12 Jews in the house where she later worked as a maid; an
abode which was, of course, owned by a high ranking Kreisleiter.
Irena's
Vow is Louise Archambault's cinematic retelling of Irena's story, adapted
for the screen by Dan Gordon from his Broadway play of the same name. Is
there such a thing as war fatigue, with this further film about nazi
occupied Poland? No and yes, and now more than ever: the most dispiriting
aspect of the last six months is how nazi imagery, ideology and measures
have been so casually adopted by a disproportionate amount of the culture
(along with increasingly unveiled antisemitism via the wilfully
opportunist misappropriation of the situation in Gaza, ie, using it as an
excuse to demonise all Jewish people and not the heads of states who
decide upon mass murder. Like blaming me for Starmer's PIP cuts, say).
We've somehow let this happen, and, as the generation which experienced
the Holocaust pass on, the concern is that historical events become a
story from the past, robbed of urgency and the edifying revelations about
humanity's inherent cruelty and need to hate.
Irena's Vow opens with the hospital where Irena studies being bombed by
the nazi-Soviet invasion, and our titular character fleeing (dexterously
played by Sophie Nélisse, who, speaking of online entities who
unapologetically perform sieg heils/ actually cut their hair to look like
the führer as if it is all some fucking joke or something and the people
who are regrettably associated with them, looks like the musician Grimes)
the carnage, setting the narrative's insistent dynamics of danger and the
analogous attempts to avoid it. Also established in these opening scenes
is Irena's Vow's specific representation of war, where the invasion simply
and comprehensively means death, destruction and chaos; features
indicative of the Third Reich, supporting the historian's argument that it
wasn't so much that the Allied powers won, but more that, due to their
insidious ambition and equivalent inability to manage their regime, the
nazis lost. Irena returns home to find her house has been taken over by an
SS officer, with her family missing (stay tuned for the world's most
delightful post credits surprise, though). Indefatigable, Irena manages to
find work in a hotel serving these guffawing invaders. As the film
continues, one official takes a shine to her and employs her as a
housemaid in his huge and purloined mansion, wherein Irena, galvanised by
the cruelty she witnesses, secrets 12 people on the run.
Archambault and Gordon's presentation of the nazis intrigues. Immediately
identifiable by their pompous suits juxtaposing the utilitarian garb of
the huddled indigenous (you're reminded about the tedious twerps who go on
about how stylish these fascist-supposed-fashionistas were. Nah, they were
just overdressed), we see the higher-ranking generals as they drink,
infight, and commit random acts of violence (there is a particularly vivid
and upsetting sequence involving an infant, which Archambault frames
unflinchingly from Irena's perspective). As the brutal and status obsessed
often are, these people are clueless, so much so that it is easy to
believe Dougray Scott's Rugmer is completely unaware of the small
community abiding in his cellar. Moreover, the film isn't averse to
exploring the nazi character with cautious humanity, and the film
refreshingly affords Rugmer an obscure complexity, offering an
uncomfortable suggestion that this monster is ultimately capable of
compassion...
The problem is that narratively, it is correspondingly difficult to
elaborate the characterisation of the dozen refugees who Irena hides away,
seen in sequences which suspensefully play out like dark farce (at one
point, Rugmer goes mental about the vermin in the basement and accuses
Irena of knowing all about them... but it's alright as it turns out he's
just referring to rats, etc), and as a result we don't get to know the
Jewish contingent or really appreciate the hardship and misery of their
reduced living conditions. Such a portrayal would have rounded out the
story and balanced the representation, not to mention heightening the
drama (we do, however, see that the cohort create a curtained
corner: the "honeymoon suite" for couples. Best hope no one gets pregnant,
eh...).
Nonetheless, what Irena's Vow does achieve is a stoic and
involving retelling of an inspiring series of courageous acts and
self-sacrifice. The only reason we know about Gut's story is because she
spoke up about it in 1975 to confront Holocaust deniers, and was
successively supported by all available evidence. Archambault and Gordon's
film likewise serves as a reminder of what happened, but also an important
affirmation of hope and the human spirit in an era where it progressively
seems as if the nazis didn't lose after all.
Irena's Vow is in UK/ROI cinemas
and on VOD from March 28th.
