We Were the Lucky Ones premieres March 28 on Hulu.
By Elazar Abrahams
From Poland to Ukraine, then a quick skip to Morocco and Russia. After that, a stint in Italy and a reunion in Brazil. In any other decade, and for a different group of people, this would be the most exciting vacation itinerary. But for We Were the Lucky Ones’ Kurc family, this journey is the only chance of survival from the horrors of the Holocaust and World War II. That is to say, that they are Jews in the late 1930s in a tepid Eastern European city. With their many siblings, parents, and relatives separated almost immediately at the German invasion of Poland, we follow multiple storylines, showing, true to life, how these survivors’ fates could have been changed on a whim, down to the minutiae of how a foreign embassy worker’s mood was that day.
The drama series, with an ensemble led by Logan Lerman and Joey King, consists of eight hour long episodes. The show is well intentioned, and made with great care and attention to detail. However, it isn’t very engaging. With characters scattered across the map for most of the runtime, We Were the Lucky Ones is tracking so many aspects of the war, in so many locations, on a plethora of fronts. While it’s interesting and somewhat impressive for the miniseries to attempt to detail both life in the concentration camps and refuge in the United States, ultimately it doesn’t do any of them exceptionally. One can’t help but imagine a stronger script that honed in on just a few parts of the Holocaust.
A facet of the era captured particularly well throughout the show is the dehumanization of Jews, not just from governments, but from everyday citizens. Holocaust media can tend to focus on a “righteous gentile” — Schindler’s List for example — who defies the populist tide of Hitler to stick out their own neck and harbor Jews. While that certainly did happen, more often than not were the cases that Lucky Ones portrays. In a notable scene in an early episode, the Kurcs are being evicted from their home and their possessions are to be seized by the Reich. They ask their neighbor, who’s lived next to them for years, to keep some possessions until they return (they still think the hysteria about their safety is a tad overblown). The door is slammed in their face without a word. Later in the series, we’ll see playgrounds across the continent filled with children demeaning and mocking Jewish people. Among other aggressions, these scenes paint a solid picture of how a society can break down, eventually leading to a government death camp like Treblinka, also featured in the show.
That isn’t enough to save the season though. The episodes are sluggish and don’t have the necessary talent in front of the camera to carry the weight of such a heartbreaking story. King and Lerman talk in heavy, and clearly fake, Polish accents that one never quite gets used to. If you’re not going to actually speak Polish, just use your regular English dialect, viewers are capable of understanding the setting regardless. Acting wise, no particular cast member gives a performance we can latch onto, and it’s essential in tales like these to connect on a deep human level with the characters.
There are several moments that provide thrilling escapes from what is otherwise a lackluster program, including a scene in the final stretch of the season where a group of prisoners runs through a hole in a barbed wire fence. More of that camera work and suspense would have elevated the other time spent on the ride.
TV and City 