Synopsis by Clarke Fountain
This film has confused audiences and reviewers since it was first made, because although the language it was shot in was Spanish, the story takes place entirely in Poland among a family of Jews who, in 1939, are on the run not only from the Nazis but from local anti-Semites. They manage to evade discovery at first by concealing themselves in a shallow hole dug into the ground, and they resort to similar expedients for the duration of the war. In addition to their fear of discovery and the near-starvation they endured in their below-ground refuges, they experienced baths of slime when it rained, their clothes rotted away, they were infested with lice, and had other afflictions. Only the help they received from a few sympathetic and reliable friends enabled them to survive. One of their hiding places was particularly clever and daring, as it was chosen to enable them to evade capture by the Germans' dogs and trackers: they hid in immediate proximity with the Germans so that their smell mingled with theirs, confusing the dogs, and they could walk inside the Germans' footprints to elude their pursuers. The obvious parallels of the protagonists' situation to similar situations in Argentine history was entirely intentional.
underground [counterculture], war, against-all-odds, defiance, family, invasion, on-the-run, poverty, revolution