‘Furiosa’ and a Polish Catholic nurse who hid Jews from Nazis
“Irena’s Vow,” now streaming, and two takes on the latest “Mad Max” movie
After covering Ethan Hawke’s Flannery O’Connor biopic Wildcat in my last Decent Films update, this edition is dedicated to two more strong women, one fictional and one real.
The real one is Irena Gut Opdyke, a Polish Catholic student nurse who boldly hid nearly a dozen Jews from Nazi authorities in occupied Tarnopol. Irena’s Vow is streaming via Hoopla and available for rental and purchase via Prime Video, Apple TV, and other services.
From my Irena’s Vow review for The Catholic Spirit:
The traditional Catholic view of the Eighth Commandment, championed by Augustine and Thomas Aquinas and affirmed in the Catechism of the Catholic Church, is that lying is never permissible, full stop. Among various challenges to this teaching in its full rigor, few have had quite the sticking power of the “Nazi at the door, Jews in the basement” scenario: Can it be permissible to lie to Nazis to save Jews from genocide?
Irena’s Vow, based on a true story, goes two steps further. First, the scenario here is “Jews in the basement, Nazi in the master bedroom.” I don’t know how many people from Poland, the Netherlands and elsewhere have been accounted “Righteous Among the Nations” by Yad Vashem, the World Holocaust Remembrance Center, for seeking to hide Jews in their houses from the Nazis—but there can’t be many who dared to hide Jews in the basement of a villa under the nose of the Nazi officer occupying the villa.
Second, Irena’s Vow builds to a morally charged crisis some may find more challenging than the one about lying…
In 2015 I named George Miller’s Mad Max: Fury Road one of my top 5 films of the year. I enjoyed the prequel Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga and reviewed it for U.S. Catholic—but I also had reservations, which I explored at length in a second piece for my other Substack, All Things SDG.
From my Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga review for U.S. Catholic:
Is there no hope? This desperate question hangs over the previous film in the saga, Miller’s 2015 extravaganza Mad Max: Fury Road. Now, the same question haunts Furiosa, an epic origin-story prequel for Fury Road’s stealth protagonist, Charlize Theron’s Imperator Furiosa. Here Furiosa is no less memorably realized, first as a child by Alyla Browne and then as a young adult by Anya Taylor-Joy. From the riveting opening act — a taut, fierce chase sequence resulting in Furiosa’s loss of paradise, the first of several traumatic losses in her life — Miller establishes his heroine as canny, resourceful, and single-minded in her determination to survive and find her way home again.
Following Dune Part Two and Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes, Furiosa is this year’s third dystopian sci-fi sequel set in a harsh world of warlords and conquerors striving to seize the means of production or destruction. Five years ago, secular apocalypses were everywhere in pop culture. While apocalyptic stories are still with us (e.g., the upcoming Quiet Place prequel), increasingly, the focus seems to have shifted to life after the end of the world as we know it. (Our bleak cultural moment may be perfect for the coming third film in Danny Boyle’s 28 Days Later/28 Months Later zombie series, called, of course, 28 Years Later.)
From “Two things I wish George Miller had done differently in ‘Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga’” at All Things SDG
George Miller’s Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga is a blast, and, while its box-office crash and burn is disappointing on a number of levels, it’s well-made enough that I’m sure it will go on to be watched, discussed, and even studied for years…
My own nagging issues with Furiosa in relation to Fury Road are thematic. Fury Road stands out to me as the series high point not just cinematically, but morally. The Mad Max trilogy starring Mel Gibson leaned heavily on two interrelated forms of violence: a) women suffering sexual menace and violence, and b) men raining vengeance on their enemies. On the first front, Fury Road’s feminist revolt against toxic patriarchy was a welcome corrective. “We are not things” is the message left by the Five Wives—in reality, sex slaves in a eugenic program to produce genetically normal children—of the monstrous tyrant Immortan Joe as they make a desperate bid for escape along with Charlize Theron’s rogue Imperator Furiosa. On the second front, I appreciate that Immortan Joe’s gruesome death at Furiosa’s hands is a quick, efficient bit of business in the heat of battle, not a prolonged or sadistic revenge scene.
(Remember: The Decent Films Substack, which you’re reading now, will keep you up to date on all my movie writing. All Things SDG covers everything I write, movie-related and otherwise.) As always, thanks for reading!