Irena's Vow

I fully confess to doing a poor job of keeping up with current film releases over the past several years, as my knowledge has mostly been ad hoc, based on what's showing up on my streaming services. I'd heard nothing of this film until seeing it on the carte on Showtime a couple of nights ago, knew almost the same about any of the parties involved. I also rarely write notes on IMDB but am drawn in this instance in light of the undeservedly mediocre overall score, skewed by one review which seems ridiculous in all regards to me. So, onto the film itself. As others have noted, the acting and production values can be uneven, but what a story! There's more than a bit of Schindler's List here, but this is even more extraordinary, with the protagonist having anything but a privileged position. Other have recapped the plot well; I won't do that here, but as impressive this is as a yarn, what's more so is the moral complexity and humanity of almost all of the characters, even the Germans, and the gimlet eyed vision of the filmmaker that, although they're not the primary bad guys here, the Soviets have almost as much to answer for as the Nazis for their actions during this time, very much putting the lie to the "Good Fight" misnomer (as so many other things, entirely unrelated to this film, like Japanese-American internment, our bombing of civilian populations in Germany and Japan, indifference to the plight of European Jews, etc., etc, do too). I'm often moved by great cinema, but I must admit getting a bit more than teary watching the follow up stories of the real life characters which roll during the final credits (don't miss this!). This nets out for me somewhere between an 8 and a 9, but it gets the benefit of the doubt for the greatness of the story and the need to bump up the collective score here. I note that, while this movie isn't Polish, it's set there, making for a duo of two of the best films of the past years I've seen along with "Forgotten Love". Highly recommended.

Irena is a Polish woman caught in the early stages of Nazi occupation, enlisted to work for the new regime, who after witness to the horrors unleashed against the local Jews, decides to do everything in her power to save the victims. That is her vow. And this is her astounding true story.

Presented more as a theatre piece than movie, "Irena's Vow" seldom moves outdoors, save for a few market square scenes, focusing mainly on interiors, where Irena keeps mansion for a high ranking officer, and keeps a group of Jews hidden in the cellar.

The grit, grime and scuffy realities of war are absent here, as everything focuses on the characters and the carefully orchestrated set pieces. The clean and simple play presentation makes for a distancing film experience, which slowly dissolves as the story picks up the pace. And the story is the star here.

Scrambling to avoid detection under the enemy's roof, Irena shows cool resolve, clever problem solves, and total dedication to her cause. The surface sheen of the movie which never digs far enough to get a good grip on the characters, is finally broken with the post film credits, that feature photos and historic summaries of the aftermath. Then it finally hits home.

• hipCRANK.

"Irena's Vow" tells the story of a courageous Polish girl, Irena Gut Opdyke, who gets caught in a street roundup to be used as a laborer for the Nazis, who have taken over Poland. Irena, through her cunning and beauty, ends up as a housekeeper for an SS officer at a new villa, which was previously owned by a Jewish family. Through her humanity and cunning ways, Irena is able to rescue and house 11 Jewish workers from her previous place of work and transport them to the new Villa, where she hides them in the cellar and then another secret room, all under the roof of the SS Officer. To reveal any more would be considered a spoiler. I found this production very well acted and directed and location shots in Poland were very effective. The film lacked the emotional punch of a "Schindler's List" or "One Life", but the film is worth seeing and learning about another heroic person who endangered their own life to help Jewish victims from the death camps. For this, Irena was given the title of Righteous One in Israel, for saving Jewish lives.

The street scenes for this were filmed in Lublin old town 4 kilometres from Majdanek concentration camp where my wife's grandmother (Adela) was held as a prisoner for 18 months.

Adela was a nurse in the Polish secret army and was caring for a Polish soldier who was injured when the Gestapo arrived one day in her hometown of Kurów and went to her house and shot the soldier and arrested her.

She was taken to Lublin Gestapo headquarters and tortured for two weeks including being raped multiple times and they broke all of her fingers and her jaw and many of her ribs and was then sent to Majdanek concentration camp.

She died three years ago and after the church service we saw a strange man talking to my father-in-law and after a few mins, we saw that they were both crying and hugging each other.

It turns out that he came from the same town of Kurów and in the war he was very sick and the only available medicine was from the Germans and his mother made the desperate decision to trade the information on Adela for medicine for her son.

Grandmother Adela never spoke about how she was deceived until her death as she knew that the son, his mother and all of her family would be called traitors and could face massive problems in their lives.

She only mentioned the camp a few times in her life as it was too traumatic to speak about, but the times she did speak about it was about the disgusting things the Germans did to the Jews rather reminiscent of the street scene in this film where one German woman guard smashed a baby's head on the floor because it was crying too loud.

I try to understand the hatred between nations of modern times but Grandmother Adela taught us that the hatred should be directed towards the leaders of such terrible conflicts, not the people.

I was proud to name my daughter after her.

Irena's Vow

Other than beating the tar out of Nazis, the other kind of WWII movies I enjoy are the ones that feature the unsung heroes that were able to rescue small groups of Jewish people. Irena's Vow features Irena Gut, a Polish woman forced into service by the occupying Germans in the city of Tarnopol (now in the Ukraine as Ternopol).

While working for Major Rügemer, she is assigned to supervise the laundry, and then as the housekeeper for his villa, seized from a Polish family. When she saw that all the people in the laundry were to be executed as part of Hitler's plan, she schemes to hide them in the very house that the Major now occupies.

If this wasn't a true story, I wouldn't have believed a word of this. It was so poorly acted, I felt like I was watching a modern film with costumes, instead of a film to transport us back in time to the mad era of Nazi insanity.

It becomes quite clear, sort of, early on that Rügemer has a thing for Irena, but it catapults forward when he discovers that there are Jews hiding in his home. The speed and transformation of superior to inferior to Polish lover was so fast, it just didn't make sense in the narrative.

Sophie Nélisse, as Irena, did a great job of emoting the compassion, the panic, the fear, the horror and the bravery all needed to survive. After witnessing a child get murdered on the street by yet another disgraceful "German", she really dove into her risky plan to save as many Jews as she could.

I wanted to love this due to the bravery in the depths of despair, but it wasn't completely well done. I don't know, nor can I put my finger on it, but I felt it could have been done better. I'm just glad it really happened and the people went on to live full lives. The notes in the credits were really sweet.