Review: Escape From Sobibor (1987)

Set in a Polish ‘work camp’ (read: death camp) during WWII, Alan Arkin plays Jewish prisoner Leon, who bravely attempts to orchestrate a mass prisoner escape from their brutal Nazi captors. Joanna Pacula and a Russian Rutger Hauer play two other prisoners instrumental in planning and carrying out the escape. Jack Shepherd plays another prisoner who only slowly – and gut-wrenchingly – realises that his family has been exterminated in the ‘showers’.  

 

If you can get your eyes on the full 2+ hour version, this 1987 TV movie from director Jack Gold (The mediocre “The Medusa Touch”) is really worthwhile. It’s an important film about an important story that should never be forgotten. Possibly due to being a mid 80s TV movie that has more recently been viewed in truncated form (with about an hour cut out!), it seems to not be spoken about much these days. However, it was widely viewed on original run, and won Golden Globes for the film itself (in a tie with another TV film) and Best Supporting Actor for Rutger Hauer.

 

Scripted by Reginald Rose (“12 Angry Men”, “The Wild Geese”, “Whose Life is It, Anyway?”), it’s appropriately grim, uncompromising stuff. WWII is probably the historical period I’m most well-versed and interested in, so the material was pretty irresistible to me. You mileage/interest may differ, as we get uncomfortably close to the gas chamber/showers in this, and seeing the black smoke from the chimney in the background of many scenes is truly nauseating. I saw a couple of documentaries in school many years ago and had horrifying flashbacks to those watching this fictionalised treatment of the subject. You’ve been duly warned that this may or may not be a journey you wish to endure. Personally, I think it’s a lesson we all need to learn, and then continue to be reminded of so that we never forget and try to prevent these sorts of things happening again.

 

The performances by the stars and lesser names are all excellent here, particularly lead Alan Arkin, and a terrifying Hartmut Becker as one of the most evil of the Nazis depicted here. They’re all a study in banal evil, none of the actors playing the Nazis goes overboard or becomes a safe, cartoon “Hogan’s Heroes” depiction either. Rutger Hauer only shows up after 75 minutes as a defiant Russian jew, and is charismatic AF. Yeah, he probably should’ve been cast as one of the Dutch jews in the film but that’s a bit of a nitpick. Hauer has good chemistry with Joanna Pacula, in one of her better turns. I was also rather fond of the characters of the young jewellery maker and his slightly older girlfriend, but there’s not much time for sweetness and light here.

 

I will never truly reconcile how or why the Holocaust happened. Inhumane evil that defies comprehension. This TV movie offers up a pretty gruelling, very effective depiction of this kind of banal, ‘ordinary’ evil that was allowed to happen. Terrific cast, stirring and sober story, must-see.

 

Rating: B+