Maven's Nest
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- from IRENA’S VOW courtesy of Quiver
This “based on a true story” of a young Polish woman who saved a dozen Jews during the Holocaust seems Hollywood-ized.
By Nora Lee Mandel
IRENA’S VOW
Directed by Louise Archambault
Written by Dan Gordon, based on his play
Produced by Beata Pisula, Nicholas Tabarrok, Jeff Sackman, Berry Meyerowitz, and Tim Ringuette
Canada and Poland. 121 mins, in English and another language with English subtitles. Not Rated.
Sophie Nélisse, Dougray Scott, Andrezej Seweryn, Maciek Nawrocki
Released through Jewish film festivals by Go2Films, in U.S. theaters March 2024 by Quiver Distribution and in Canada by Elevation Pictures
What would make “based on a true story” of a young Polish woman who saved a dozen Jews during the Holocaust seem pedestrian?
There’s the vagueness. At “Eastern Border, Poland, 1939”, the radio news warns that Poland has been divided between Germany and the Soviet Union. Explosions and soldiers in vague uniforms appear, not identified as Russian. Dazed, a 19-year-old nurse trainee “Irena Gut” (Sophie Nélisse) leaves work, and perhaps some convalescence, at her hospital to find street names changed, her home commandeered, and her family missing, presumed dead. She’s attending mass when Germans invade the church, with no indication that she has been living under Red Army occupation for two years.
The vagueness is magnified because everyone is speaking English. Played quite well by Polish actors, as German actors are reluctant to take such roles these days, the Nazis are speaking some non-English in conversations among themselves, and “Irena” supposedly has useful German-language skills. But we are in Hollywoodland World War II, despite the rise of Eastern European films presenting their delayed, authentically gritty view of this period (like Agnieszka Holland’s 2011 In Darkness). With Poland very sensitive to wording about what happened on their soil, I do understand that with some Polish support and filmed in Poland during the in-rush of Ukrainian refugees, there is a priority to appeal to a broad Western audience about a Polish heroine.
“Irena” and other Polish civilians are put to long labor in a Nazi ordnance factory. After fainting, she begs the factory manager “Major Rugmer” (played by familiar star Dougray Scott) for alternative work to still be useful. Impressed by her Aryan looks, the Major re-assigns her to the officers’ mess. There the strict former innkeeper “Herr Schulz” (Andrzej Seweryn) takes pity on her, but he does keep adding and adding to her kitchen, waitressing, and supervisory responsibilities.
“Irena” is now not only in charge of the Jewish launderers and tailors. But she is told her own survival will depend on successfully carrying out the problematic assignment of picking out those who lied about their skills and are producing inferior work for the officers. Downstairs, she meets the dozen sympathetic Jews by name, who confess their marital status and real skills –medical student, music teacher, accountant, lawyer, chemist, and the women who are a seamstress, nurse and artist.
Back in the officers’ dining room, the Major complains of the lack of strong factory workers, there’s mentions that this city is Tarnopol, significant because the Nazis established a Jewish ghetto soon after they invaded. Shopping in the market, “Irena” witnesses the awful brutality of those forced movements. A woman vendor (actress can’t be identified) grabs her to stifle her screams, and her boss insists she pull herself together: “Remember your survival can mean serving dessert.” Serving smug SS officer “Rokita” (Maciek Nawrocki) also means overhearing what streets they are clearing next. Surprise: those blocks are empty before his storm troopers arrive. He’s frustrated, but he chillingly regales the disinterested Major with the efficiency of German engineering for how to step-by-step make sectors “Judenfrei”, and announces his assigned deadline for the whole city.
“Irena”s self-imposed burden ratchets up to save the dozen Jews for whom she now feels responsible. Luckily, the removal of Jewish residents has opened up a villa for the Major’s home and planned entertainments, and he chooses “Irena” as his super-housekeeper (can one say Überhousekeeper?) She is even able to convince him not to post an orderly with her, what with her heretofore unmentioned bad experiences with Soviet soldiers. Through a series of complicated, almost comically entertaining, moves, subterfuges, concealments, and pretenses, she and the sometimes not-so-hidden Jews carry them off with the efficiency and aplomb that the enemy achieves for the opposite purpose. She doesn’t even breathe hard to do it, while constantly running up and down stairs.
Suspenseful danger does lurk. Not only watchers, collaborators, and blackmailers are threats amid close-calls, but “Irena” and other Poles must witness public executions of “Jew lovers” of all ages caught hiding or abetting escapees. Regardless, “Irena” sticks to her principles, including an anti-abortion speech (I don’t know why the pregnant Jewish woman is also the one coughing frequently), and sacrificing herself to the Major, albeit she is a lot more teary than seductive or romantic. (Nélisse is livelier in the series Yellowjackets.)
By the end of the war, her liberated Jews are able to return the favors when she is arrested for collaboration. Old photographs and home movie footage in the post script details more coincidences and surprises in “Irena”s life, and she was added to the over 7,200 Poles honored as “Righteous Among Nations” at the Yad Vashem Memorial. Scripter Dan Gordon already had a long Hollywood career in movies and TV when he met Irena Gut Opdyke when she was actively challenging Holocaust-deniers before she passed in 2002, and turned her story into a play that traveled widely, including off-Broadway in 2009. A veteran of Israeli military service, he teaches cinema studies at the evangelical Liberty University.
While the settings and the initiatives of Canadians director Louise Archambault and cinematographer Paul Sarossy add cinematic movement, the Hollywood-ization seems old-fashioned. A general audience uninterested in accuracy, credible details, and emotional depth will be pleased.
2/14/2024
Nora Lee Mandel is a member of New York Film Critics Online. Her reviews are counted in the Rotten Tomatoes TomatoMeter:
Complete Index to Nora Lee Mandel's Movie Reviews
My reviews have appeared on: FF2 Media; Film-Forward; Lilith, FilmFestivalTraveler; and, Alliance of Women Film Journalists and for Jewish film festivals. Shorter versions of my older reviews are at IMDb's comments, where non-English-language films are listed by their native titles.
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