Irena’s Vow – A Wikipedia-Esque Biopic That Plays It Too Safe

Depicting, through film, what might be one of the worst atrocities is certainly a careful balance to manage. Though many films have managed to depict the Holocaust without offense, Schindler’s List, Son of Saul, The Pianist, just to name a few, there have, of course, been a handful that hurt, more than harm, people’s perception of the event, The Boy in the Striped Pajamas is a primary example of a Holocaust film hated by Holocaust scholars. It’s a tough line to walk, depicting the atrocity whilst tiptoeing (or not tiptoeing) around the actual depiction of horrific events and trying to figure out which direction the film wants to go. The safe and overall audience friendly watch, or the difficult and brutally honest depiction. Irena’s Vow overall plays the film fairly safe, opting for more of a ‘crowd pleaser’ (which feels like a weird word to describe a Holocaust movie), showcasing the incredible work of Irena Gut, a Polish woman who helped hide 12 Jewish people during the Holocaust, all whilst working for a Nazi Commander. Originally imagined as a short lived Broadway play, it’s certainly a mostly inoffensive film, but the paint by the numbers story and relatively safe ideas, it never rises above a well made TV movie. Clearly made to be relatively accessible and well-meaning, the safe nature of the story never challenges the viewer or shows them anything a Wikipedia article couldn’t. 

The main protagonist of Irena’s Vow is Irena Gut (Nélisse), a Polish woman in nursing school who was then forced to work in a munitions factory before eventually working as a servant to Nazis. After being left in charge of the Jewish people working at tailors, she was tasked to become the personal servant of Major Rugmer (Scott). Realizing that the Jewish people in the basement will be sent off and killed, she eventually opts to hide them in the basement of Rugmer’s house. The remainder of the film saw her hiding them, their near misses, and the inspirational story of how she kept all of the Jewish stowaways under her care alive. It is truly an inspirational tale, and from rudimentary research, mostly accurate, it’s just a shame that the tale never rose above an inspirational, made for everyone Holocaust movie. Despite the inspirational story, its is a surface level one and one that never goes deep into its characters, themes or motivations, resulting in a paint-by-numbers telling. The story never rises above its simplistically told plot that felt like little depth was added. Yes, the story of Irena saving the lives of 12 Jewish people during the Holocaust is inspirational and 100% deserves to be told right. However, with anything about the Holocaust, audiences deserve to be more ‘challenged’ with films about the subject as well as the subjects should be depicted in a more well-rounded way. 

The film’s insistence on telling the audience rather than showing causes its the lack of depth. Instead, it chooses to spoon feed the audience the information rather than letting them figure it out for themselves. Of course, when it comes to Holocaust films, they cannot all be like the recently released The Zone of Interest, a film rich with ideas around morality and the banality of evil, showing its audience instead of telling them. Films like this are great, but often inaccessible to some audiences and thus to succeed, Holocaust films must strike a balance between being accessible to a mass audience (and there is, of course, debate around if a Holocaust film needs to do that in the first place) but also challenging their ideas and allowing them to think about what is being presented to them. While not offensive as a whole, it rather plays it too safe in terms of how it presents its story to audiences. Like other biopics, they often tend to come close to a Wikipedia article in how they are presented. Showing event after event from their subjects’ lives, there is little time to develop Irena, or the group she was hiding. While she felt like a mystery to audiences, those she was hiding fared worse. To be fair, there were 12 of them. However, they lacked the kind of proper characterization to make them feel more like people rather than characters in a story who only existed to propel the plot. 

Similarly, the acting does the best it can with the material given. Nélisse tries her best with the script, and to her credit, she does a mostly commendable job as Irena, minus her iffy Polish accent. Never rising above the level of ‘pretty good’, given the script at hand and weak characterization, she certainly does her best. Scott certainly does a better accent than Nélisse’s often unconvincing Polish one, as his performance as Major Rugmer is, to his credit, one of the highlights of the film. Playing a complicated character (just about as complex in real life as he was in the film, morals wise), the film had a handful of scenes and lines didn’t work in his favour. Not working entirely because of a lack of context, Scott also does well with the material, off the strength of perhaps the more convincing accent. 

As a whole, Irena’s Vow never does anything wholly offensive. Rather, it fails to go beyond its surface level ideas, ultimately creating what ends up being a Wikipedia-esque biopic about a woman that deserves much better than the simplistic themes and ideas presented. Its script, constantly showing the audience rather than telling, held the film back, presenting the audience with a straightforward story that never challenges audiences to think about what they are watching. Of course, there’s nothing inherently wrong with the director and screenwriter’s approach here, however, one can only hope to be more challenged watching a film about such events rather than having their hand held over the course of its running time. 

still courtesy of Elevation Pictures

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Jasmine Graham