We Were The Lucky Ones review: A harrowing journey through the past

There is an admirable quality in the way We Were The Lucky Ones, the Hulu limited series that premieres March 28, approaches the story of the Kurc family. As its title implies, this is a period drama about a Jewish family in Poland who survived through World War II and the Nazi occupation of their hometown. The harrowing tales of how each member managed to evade capture, circumvent persecution, and even at times narrowly escape mass massacres, are presented with an unflinching eye. That does make for an exhausting, emotionally taxing watch, but then, its subject matter requires nothing less.

Based on Georgia Hunter’s novel of the same name, in itself based on Hunter’s own family history, We Were The Lucky Ones opens in Radom, Poland. We first meet the Kurcs as they’re gathered for Passover in 1939. There are whispers of horrors and dangers, of threats and perils (abroad but also increasingly closer to home) but this modestly moneyed, well-educated family has its sights on sunny prospects—on budding romances and future grandchildren, on bright career opportunities and heartwarming personal ones. A year later, though, as Addy (Logan Lerman) hopes to travel back from Paris to Radom as he did the year before, he realizes that many of the things he and his family had taken for granted (like safe travel across Europe) are now things of the past. Soon enough, the entire Kurc clan will find itself scattered all over Europe. Siblings make arrangements to head to Russia; parents settle for staying behind—all while Addy tries to navigate his way out of Vichy France, keenly aware of what awaits him if he stays.

This is the mood for much of this Erica Lipez-developed adaptation. The Kurcs stand in for the “lucky” (luckier, even) ones: the ones who survived. But, as episode after episode bleakly asks over and over again: at what cost? The Kurcs spend much of the war unsure where their family members are, wondering who may still be alive, and questioning whether they’ll all be able to break bread together once more. Yes, the title does give away the ending toward which the series’ grueling narrative twists propel us but that doesn’t make watching the Kurc family be on the brink of constant danger any more comforting.

Every episode of We Were The Lucky Ones takes its name from a place. Its first three episodes, which will release simultaneously, have us trek from “Radom” to “Lvov” and later to “Siberia.” Each also tracks the ways the Kurcs find their everyday life is slowly whittled away to nothing. Petty discriminations on the street soon lead to legal dispossessions, to evictions, and later still to orders to be transported elsewhere (to work camps, if they’re lucky). This all happens with such brazen cruelty and swiftness that you do wonder, as young Halina (Joey King) does, why they all didn’t leave Poland when they first saw the inklings of what was to come. Except, as her parents (Lior Ashkenazi’s Sol and Robin Weigert’s Nechuma) remind her time and time again, how could they so easily leave the place they’d come to call home, the apartment they’d built with their years of labor?

But even those who were out of Radom weren’t really in any better position. Halina’s brother Addy, for instance, finds himself stuck in Vichy Paris, unable to pay or wheedle his way back to Poland to his family or any kind of place that would find him out of the reach of Nazi occupying forces. The inherent tragedy spelled out throughout We Were The Lucky Ones is watching these individuals discover that the very strictures and structures that had so organized their lives have fallen prey to an oppressive if well-orchestrated antisemitic campaign. Governments, law enforcement, banks, embassies—every single site of power that would have years before granted them safety and security is soon deployed against them. They must rely only on one another, at times betraying their own faith in the face of certain death in order to survive. Halina, Addy, and the rest of the Kurcs constantly have to confront the insidiousness of antisemitism, especially once it becomes the architecture of the world that surrounds them.

As an aside, there remains one simple aspect of We Were The Lucky Ones that nags. The show begins in Poland, and the Kurcs all presumably speak Polish. Except every single actor portraying them speaks in Eastern European-accented English. This is obviously a logistical—and arguably aesthetic—choice to bring their story to life within the confines of an American television series. But that often becomes more confusing and distracting than it need be: French, Spanish, German, and Russian are all heard throughout the series, and at times it’s unclear what language those Russian soldiers (or Nazi guards or Czechoslvokian ocean liner guests or Moroccan hotel employees) are employing when addressing (in English) the Kurc family and their fellow Polish brethren. Namely, is English here always standing in for Polish? To say it’s unclear is an understatement. I understand the simplicity in merely having your protagonists speak the language of the series’s intended audience but given the multilingual environment it’s depicting, such a choice flattens the cultural specificity the show is trying to bring to the small screen.

As a portrait of what the road toward dehumanization looks like, and of the begrudgingly brave leaps families like the Kurcs were forced to make throughout the war-torn years in Europe in order to make it out alive, We Were The Lucky Ones is an unsparing chronicle of grueling survival. Handsomely shot and with an eye for a compassionate lens through which to tell these stories, Hulu’s latest is understandably dour and sentimental. It wants to celebrate the triumph of the spirit, the survival of its central family, while also mourning those whose lives were lost. It’s a tricky tonal balance to strike and for the most part the series succeeds, making its title capture the vexing uplifting message it purports to illuminate.

We Were The Lucky Ones premieres March 28 on Hulu