THE PIANIST (2002)

Country: France / Germany / Poland / U.K.

Genre(s): Drama

Director: Roman Polanski

Cast: Adrien Brody / Ed Stoppard / Emilia Fox

Plot

The true story of concert pianist Wladyslaw Szpilman, a Polish Jew who endured Nazi persecution during World War II and escaped the Holocaust by living in hiding and desperation for years on end.

What I Liked

The memoirs of Jewish survivors of Nazi brutality are many (read “Maus” and “Night” if you haven’t already).  The importance of their existence is obvious and several have been made into excellent films (including “Europa Europa,” which I’ve already reviewed in this blog).  But none of the films that I’ve seen offer anything approaching the visceral impact of “The Pianist.”  As a child, director Roman Polanski grew up during the Nazi occupation of Poland and, of Jewish ancestry, was forced to survive by hiding his identity and relying on the illicit hospitality of strangers.  Like Wladyslaw Szpilman, the subject of his film, Polanski lived in Krakow, was separated from his family (who were sent to death camps), endured multiple life-threatening ordeals, and went on to success in an artistic field after the war.  So leave it to Polanski to lend the utmost authenticity to Szpilman’s story.

There is little to be found in “The Pianist” concerned with artistic flair, stylishness, or technical innovation, and that’s clearly an intentional choice by Polanski, who showed plenty of all three qualities in earlier films.  That choice ends up being the source of the movie’s greatness.  Instead, the film presents a frank, no-frills documentation of the events that happened in Krakow between 1939 and 1944.  Captured with devastating clarity are the poverty of the ghettos, the sadism of the Nazis, the desperation of the Jews, and, most striking of all, the corpses of men, women, and children lying exactly how they fell in the streets for days and weeks on end.  Those bodies are presented mostly as meaningless things which everyone else has to step around to get where they’re going.  This matter-of-factness with which everyone regards the constant surrounding death proves one of the most heartbreaking facets of the film.  Only someone like Polanski, who experienced it all first hand, could remember these kinds of details to render them with such unnerving emotional effect on film.

Getting beyond the history and social drama surrounding him, Adrien Brody’s personification of Szpilman’s fall from refined intellectual to ragged scavenger lies at the heart of the personal story. Brody captures the change in the details of his performance, making subtle changes along the way so that the viewer doesn’t notice Szpilman’s physical and psychic transformation until it becomes complete.  Suddenly we realize we realize we’re watching a limping skeleton in rags rummaging through empty homes for crumbs and we are struggling to remember the slick-haired, bright-eyed idealist in the fine suits.  Brody’s performance is nothing less than astonishing.

What I Didn’t Like

I certainly didn’t enjoy some of the emotions the movie made me feel.  I can’t imagine anyone would go into a movie about what the Nazis did to Jews expecting the feel-good movie of the year, but in case it’s not obvious, you can expect to be angry at humanity as a species at several points in this movie.  The term heartbreaking is used a lot in describing movies, yet has never been more deserved than when used to describe “The Pianist.”  But it’s that very breaking of the heart which makes “The Pianist” so important and an absolute must-see movie.

Emotionally, I felt generally less moved by the events on screen once Szpilman had been left alone, without his family and friends, who are all either murdered or shipped off to death camps about half way through the movie.  They're relationships with each other and with him are what really draw the view in; when they go, we're left with just Szpilman.  Obviously they're going is the truth and integral to the story overall, but after this the movie becomes noticeably colder, perhaps reflect the loss of warmth in Szpilman's own life.  The problem is that, beyond his amazing fight for survival and the astonishing changes he goes through in that fight, I honestly did not find Szpilman alone all that likeable.  I had no reason to dislike him, either, but I rooted for him only because he in no way deserved to endure what he went through, not because I found his personality engaging in any way.  Perhaps this was another aspect of Polanski’s truthful approach to his material; maybe the real Szpilman wasn’t all that charismatic of a guy.  The director clearly makes a concerted effort to avoid sentimentality or sappiness, even when it comes to his protagonist.

Most Memorable Scene

There are more than a handful of absolutely astonishing moments in this movie that will resonate with me for a good long time.  I’m expecting a lot of them to pop up in my nightmares, especially one where Szpilman seeks out the help of friends only to find the entire family, including two young boys, lying dead in the street with bullet holes in their heads.  But equally powerful is a brief moment of tarnished beauty, so let’s focus on that one.  A starving Szpilman is discovered by a Nazi officer, who orders him to sit and play the piano for him.  Here Brody plays Chopin as the broken Szpilman, capturing all the rapture and agony of both the song and the character.  Meanwhile, Polanski allows a brief moment of visual flourish, using lighting and camera angles to make it all seem like an out-of-body experience as watch, enraptured, a Jew play at a piano draped in the coat and hat of a Nazi officer.

My Rating: 5 out of 5