PIANIST (2002)

I've watched "The Pianist" twice since it's 2002 release, and felt compelled to write a review after watching it tonight. This is a well-directed Holocaust movie by Roman Polanski, and the stellar acting by Adrien Brody [who deservedly won an Oscar for his role] makes "The Pianist" a truly memorable viewing experience.

The story is based on the real-life experiences of Jewish pianist Wladyslaw Szpilman [played by Adrien Brody] during the Nazi occupation of Warsaw in WW II. The movie follows him from his piano playing days at Polish Radio, through the restrictions imposed upon the Jews by the Nazis, the move by Szpilman and his family to the Warsaw ghetto,how he is saved from deportation [whilst the rest of his family gets deported to Treblinka, an extermination camp], his role in the Jewish resistance movement, and finally his struggles in hiding on the Aryan side of Warsaw till war's end.

The brutality of the Nazis is very effectively portrayed scenes of Nazi violence against the Jews are usually portrayed in brief but potent scenes, leaving an indelible mark in the viewer's memory. One particular scene still haunts me the Nazis have selected a group of Jews for deportation [including four members of Szpilman's family] and a young woman innocently asks the SS officer in charge where they're being taken. His response is a shot to her head just like that, and her only crime was to speak up. There are many poignant scenes that are heartrending in their portrayal of human suffering a grieving young mother who is beside herself as she smothered her own child to death to prevent the baby's cries from being heard, bodies of Nazi victims including young children, and also one particularly disturbing scene where an old man in a wheelchair is picked up by the Nazis [for being unable to stand up when the Nazis stomp into his family dinner] and thrown off the balcony. Though the scenes may appear random, the viewer is well aware that there was nothing random about the Nazis' intent that of decimating the Jews.

Adrien Brody as the pianist Szpilman effectively portrays a man who is tortured by his circumstances, yet bears all his suffering in silence witnessing the atrocities around him, being separated from his family and learning of their tragic fates later, and being forced to endure the agony of incessant hunger whilst trying to stay alive. His indomitable spirit shines through in many scenes, especially the scene where he is asked by a German officer to play the piano even in the midst of great hunger, and with fingers gnarled by sickness and starvation, Szpilman is able to play an achingly haunting piece that would have done a concert pianist proud.

"The Pianist" is definitely a memorable Holocaust film it even shows that not all Germans were monsters as exemplified by the humane German officer who helped Spzilman when he was in hiding. Though the movie evokes the horrors of the time it also captures the resilience of the human spirit under the most harrowing circumstances.

I full appreciate and endorse the idea that there will be one film in your experience that brings home the horrors of the Holocaust for you, and after that point nothing else has quite the same effect. This is true for me and actually came when I was editing out commercials of the television mini-series "Holocaust," which had none of the graphic depictions found in theatrical films such as "Schnidler's List" and "The Pianist," or even later television efforts such as "War and Remembrance." But just because the full horror truly overwhelms you that first time and never with quite the same force again, does not mean other similar tales are not worth the telling. I know I will never see a film that conveys the horror of war more than the opening sequences of "Saving Private Ryan," but that does not stop me from seeing more movies about World War II.

"The Pianist" is an atypical story of a European Jew during this period because the title character, Wladyslaw Szpilman (Adrien Brody is his Oscar winning performance), survives the Holocaust. There is a memorable shot of Szpilman walking down the street of the Warsaw ghetto after the deportation of the Jews and the streets are littered with their possessions. Hundreds of characters in the film, thousands from the ghetto, millions throughout Europe were exterminated by the Nazis. Szpilman is the exception, not the rule.

The horror of his survival is that is so random and very little of what Szpilman does contributes to his being alive at the end of the film. The explanation, such director Roman Polanski provides in this film, is that Szpilman has value as a classical pianist, a cultural icon of sorts to the people of Warsaw, whether they are Jewish or not. That is the key factor in the decisions, often impromptu ones, that save Szpilman's life. But there is also the factor of luck, whether it is both German and Russian soldiers being poor shots, or simply where you stand in line. You can see where the story would resonate with Polanski, who was pushed through the fence of the concentration camp by his father, who also survived.

In many ways "The Pianist" is a fitting counterpart to "Schindler's List" as a different sort of survivor's tale. In Steven Spielberg's film the story is heroic because of the effort to fight the system and the odds (Oskar Schindler ended a lot high on the list of AFI's Heroes this week than Moses). But there is little of the hero in Szpilman. Instead he is a witness, who often has to do nothing more than look out the window to see both the atrocities committed by the Nazis and the turning tide of the war. He is a mute witness as well, as much by temperament as by his vocation, although there is only one piano piece in the entire film where we sense that he is articulating his feelings rather than playing what he has been told to play. But Brody plays many scenes without ever uttering a word and despite the title very few scenes have music if his character is not the one playing it.

�The Pianist� falls between triumph and tragedy, which may well prove unsettling to many viewers who want the security of provided by such categorization. I have seen comparisons to the second half of this film with �Castaway,� and while I understand the comparison it falls through simply because Szpilman is a less than active agent in his own survival too many times. But that is just another small reminder that �The Pianist� is history and not fiction and that the greatest horror is not the we are the victims of a grand design but rather of the arbitrariness of the fickle finger of fate.

Buy PIANIST (2002) Now

I saw The Pianist on my birthday 3 months ago.

I had heard some good reviews and was very interested to see what Polanski had been up to lately.

I was astonished, moved, and speechless.

The movie embodies everything that I love about film....a true story being told with love and great care for the past, and in a way that makes you feel the pain that the characters experience.

Adrien Brody will now get the credit he deserves after his 10+ years in the industry. His performance was genuine and brilliant. He has been my favorite actor for a few years and out did all of his previous work with his role as Wladyslaw Szpilman. I cannot think of a more deserving performance of the Best Actor Oscar in recent years.

The Pianist is an unforgettable film about a simple man who hangs on when all hope and life is lost from the world he knows.

Read Best Reviews of PIANIST (2002) Here

Roman Polanski's The Pianist is the real life story of Wladyslaw Szpilman who was a Polish Jew who survived the Nazi occupation of Poland. Adrien Brody plays Szpilman and he gives a star-making performance. Szpilman is a concert pianist who plays on Polish radio and as the film begins he is playing on the radio when the area of Warsaw the station is in is bombed. The Szpilman family is defiant at first towards the news of the German occupation, but then like all Jewish families, they are forced to follow the strict rules the Nazis set forth regarding Jews. They are made to move from their spacious and homey apartment into a [cramped], run down space in the designated Jewish ghetto. The family struggles for money, but Wladyslaw is still able to play piano in a Jewish restaurant for meager earnings. Eventually the family is in line to be sent to a concentration camp, but through sheer fate, Wladyslaw is pulled from the line boarding the train and is spared certain death. He then spends time working a slave laborer building the wall separating the Jewish section of Warsaw from the rest of the city. Again, he escapes through the gracious help of others and through the underground resistance is kept hid in an apartment away from detection. Although free from the ghetto, he is a prisoner in the apartment and at the mercy of others. He is facing starvation when he is forced to flee the apartment when it is bombed. He hides out in a hospital for a while and eventually ends up in the bombed out ruins of Warsaw. It is while he is hiding in the ruins that he again faces almost certain death when he is discovered by a German officer, Captain Hosenfeld (Thomas Kretschmann). Hosenfeld speaks with him and asks what Szpilman's profession was and Szpilman replies he is a pianist. There happens to be a piano in the house and Hosenfeld makes Szpilman play. Szpilman plays a gorgeous piece and Hosenfeld is moved to spare Szpilman's life. He brings him food and when the Germans are retreating from the Russians, Hosenfeld gives Szpilman his coat to keep warm. It is the exchange between Hosenfeld and Szpilman that is the heart of the film and shows that despite the horror of war and the atrocities of the Nazis, that the true spirit of humanity can still shine through. Ironically, Szpilman survived the war and went on to continue his career as a pianist and Hosenfeld ended up a prisoner in a Russian war camp where he died several years after the war ended. Mr. Brody is incredible in his part. His facial expressions convey the sense of fear and hopelessness that Szpilman must have felt through his tragic journey. Never once does go over the top, it a truly genuine performance. Mr. Polanski also does a brilliant job of directing. He details the senseless brutality and omnipresence of the German occupation of Poland, but never sinks into gratuitous violence. The film was nominated for seven academy awards including Best Picture. Both Mr. Brody and Mr. Polanski scored unexpected, but richly deserved Oscars for Best Actor and Best Director respectively and Ronald Harwood won the film's third Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay.

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Roman Polanski's "The Pianist" is a hard film for me to review, because it was a hard film to watch. I am an admirer of Polanski, and have watched everthing he's made---right down to "The Fearless Vampire Killers"---scores of times. I approached "The Pianist" with a combination of intrigue and ambivalence: on the one hand, doubtless I would get a hearty serving of Holocaust horror and grue, which I wasn't looking forward to. On the other hand, Polanski is a master filmmaker at the height of his craft, and if he had a story to tell about the Nazi occupation of Poland, I wanted to hear it.

I wasn't expecting this.

"The Pianist" is not a normal film; it is certainly not a normal "Holocaust film", if there is even such a thing. And contrary to the way the film was marketed, it is not a story of hope, of redemption amidst the ruins, of a ray of light in humanity's darkness. Not at all.

This is a story of stupid, brute, hard-scrabble survival. The fact that it is set in 1939 Warsaw is almost incidental, in that the character of Wladyslaw Szpilman (played masterfully by Adrien Brody) could as easily have been stranded on a desert island, crashed in the snowy heights of the Andes, or buried in the bowels of some Stygian cave.

So viewer beware: this is not a hopeful tale, this is a brutal, harrowing, horrifying first-person journey told entirely from the viewpoint of its eponymous protagonist. And from the moment we encounter the pianist playing Chopin for the Polish state radio, until the closing credits, the camera literally never leaves his side.

With that in mind, "The Pianist" is the story of a young Jewish man's struggle to survive as the Nazi darkness falls across Poland. The story is set, and takes place entirely, in Warsaw, begins with the Nazi invasion of Poland in 1939 (with a shell literally crashing into the Pianist's formerly serene world), and culminates in the "liberation" of the city by the Soviet Red Army in 1945.

The sequences are terse, starkly filmed, often brutal, and mercilessly chronological: Szpilman's family, along with the other Jewish citizens of Warsaw, is quickly humiliated and segregated. One by one come the cold Nazi dictums: no Jews in the parks, no Jews in cafes, no Jews sitting on public benches, all Jews must wear self-made Stars of David on the right arm of their clothing. Ultimately Szpilman's family is moved to the Warsaw ghetto, and things quickly go downhill from there.

When the credits rolled, I was stunned, I was utterly in shock. I recall the initial line of "Moby Dick" from Melville: "And I alone escaped to tell thee." That, for me, is "The Pianist." Szpilman is nothing more than a brute survivor, his humanity is reduced by degrees, as before our horrified eyes he begins to die a death of a thousand cuts. And that, I think, explains why this movie was so maddening for me, and at times so repulsive.

It's hard to identify with Szpilman, this man who trades everything for survival, for the ability to once again play Chopin on his beloved ivories (and boy does he get his chance!). Adrien Brody here is truly masterful: I completely forgot that I was watching an actor on a screen play a role, and became completely absorbed in the character. It is an amazing role, but also a creepily unattractive one: Szpilman is no hero. The heroes in this movie get shot, burned, executed with no quarter and no mourners. Indeed, I became increasingly frustrated with this strangest of protagonists, who is both massively lucky and massively foolish; those familiar with the sequences where Szpilman fumbles with dishware and ambles out to Russian rescuers will understand what I'm talking about here.

Szpilman, meanwhile, survives---but there is a catch to his survival, and in it I think Polanski provides an antidote to an otherwise mesmerizing but nihilistic film that seems to whisper about the silence of God in a blindly uncaring, insane universe. And even more remarkably, despite my initial loathing for the character---my God, man, grab a rifle and get revenge!---I began to care very deeply for him.

Polanski makes a bold decision in attaching the camera solely to Szpilman, and it is a gambit that pays off handsomely. Szpilman becomes our eyes on this brutal, searingly horrific world; his ears are our ears, and we flinch when he fumbles with a cabinet and brings a cupboard full of china crashing down on the floor of his hiding place. Polanski has worked seamlessly with Director of Photography Pawel Edelman to create a totally authentic nightmare world which becomes unbearably horrible---and then, without flinching, spirals down into even more unimaginable horror.

The acting here is all first-rate. Particularly surprising is the excellent work by Thomas Kretschmann (an elegant German actor with fine poise who appeared, amazingly, as the Vampire overlord Damaskinos in Blade II), who portrays a German officer who---no, I'll let you see for yourself. In a sense, Kretschmann's character serves as the mirror image of the pianist, and puts a fine coda to the film. And while the film features the most haunting piano works of Beethoven and Chopin, composer Wojciech Kilar (who produced the astounding soundtrack to Polanski's "The Ninth Gate") returns with a haunting, moving score that serves the movie well.

I am not finished with "The Pianist." It was not an easy film to watch; indeed, it was often repulsive and maddening, and yet I imagine I'll be watching it again. If you find yourself reacting in the same way to the film, if you're tempted to turn it off---resist!---stay with it: you'll be richly rewarded. It is a bold film, a masterful movie, and a film which I contend again is not strictly a Holocaust piece: it is about survival, and centers on the question of how much of himself a man is willing to surrender in order to survive---and after the surrender, what remains of the man? What makes him human?

One question continues to trouble me, though: is Szpilman changed after his ordeal? Is he a different man---or is he the same? Did he change, after all?