Engrossing family drama set against backdrop of Holocaust
My Ukrainian Jewish parents, grandparents and great-grandparents were comfortably ensconced in the Midwest when Hitler began persecuting the Jews. Still, the sight of a swastika gives me shivers.
You can’t make a movie about that time without showing it, of course, and it’s necessary that such movies are made. But it’s never an easy watch, nor should it be.
Big numbers become abstract; they can lose their meaning. A title card that introduces the new limited series “We Were the Lucky Ones,” adapted by Erica Lipez from Georgia Hunter’s 2017 novel, which was based on the experiences of her family, tells us that by the end of the Holocaust 90% of Poland’s 3 million Jews had been annihilated: an incomprehensible fact. What makes “We Are the Lucky Ones,” now streaming on Hulu, work as well as it does is that it’s first and foremost a family drama. The Warsaw ghetto uprising is shown only as noise and smoke across a wall. The title suggests that this might not be the most depressing of Holocaust films, which is true; but there’s an encyclopedia of horrors that phrase might include. “You say I’m lucky,” one character will observe, “but maybe luck is relative.”
It’s 1938, and the Kurcs, an upper-middle-class family in Radom, Poland, have gathered for Passover. Father Sol (Lior Ashkenazi) and mother Nechuma (Robin Weigert) deal in textiles and dressmaking. Dapper Addy (Logan Lerman) is visiting from Paris. Jacob (Amit Rahav), long engaged to Bella (Eva Feiler), is in law school; and Genec (Henry Lloyd-Hughes), a lawyer, has a new girlfriend, Herta (Moran Rosenblatt), who is still a secret.
Older sister Mila (Hadas Yaron), married to Selim (Michael Aloni), a doctor, is pregnant when we meet her, but soon struggling with motherhood. Headstrong Halina (Joey King), the baby of the family and the series’ center of energy, is not thinking too seriously about her future, but she’s also ready to make a leap. Adam (Sam Woolf ), the lodger, is an architect on whom Halina has set her eye.
It’s a convincing family portrait. Between them, the Kurcs offer a range of opinions on what might or might not be coming, and what should be done. Even after the Nazis invade Poland, halfway through the opening episode, things advance by degrees, so that the next worst thing can’t quite be imagined, and once imagined really believed. Decisions are put off, disagreements turn into arguments, and fate jumps in.
They’ll follow, or be impelled to follow, different paths through the war, surviving through lucky breaks, daring escapes, the kindness of strangers, bribes, charm or cleverness, hiding or hiding in plain sight.
“The truth is they have no idea what a Jew looks like; that’s why they make us wear the star,” says Adam, who has become Poland’s most trusted producer of fake IDs.
Each episode is titled for a location. The variety of locations, the alternation of tone and predicaments as the series skips between threads, keeps it from becoming too emotionally, too existentially wearing. There are moments of respite, occasions for humor and even romance. The death camps are spoken of, but they’re elsewhere. Violence takes place mostly off screen, and when it does hit close to home, it’s all the more disturbing.
Even the moderately well-informed viewer is bound to learn a few things, but “We Were the Lucky Ones” isn’t a history lesson. It’s a human story, of husbands and wives, parents and children, friends and lovers. Its purpose, as television, is to make you feel, for the characters and by extension for a people. It’s a dark journey, but light comes in at the end. What’s lost may be found.