The Pianist Review
by David N. Butterworth (dnb AT dca DOT net)April 1st, 2003
THE PIANIST
A film review by David N. Butterworth
Copyright 2003 David N. Butterworth
*** (out of ****)
Based on celebrated pianist Wladyslaw Szpilman's autobiography (and making
more than an implicit reference to director Roman Polanski's own childhood escape
from the Warsaw Ghetto), "The Pianist" paints a vivid portrait of how Szpilman,
a Polish Jew living in Warsaw during Hitler's September 1939 invasion, escaped deportation to the concentration camps by a combination of assistance from admirers
and, as with most Holocaust survivors, enormous amounts of luck.
The film, more an eye-witness account than a strict dramatization, breathes
new life into a genre that is always difficult to watch--the inhumanity and atrocities of a Nazi regime that randomly pulls Jews, be they men, women, or children, from line-ups and executes them just as randomly. Polanski's film focuses on the family, the Szpilman family, deftly chronicling their quickly changing world as the Nazi's place humiliating restrictions on what Jewish people
can and cannot do while forcing them to identify themselves with
distinguishing
armbands.
First transferred from their affluent Warsaw residence to a crumbling walled
ghetto along with 400,000 other Polish Jews, the Szpilmans find work--and food-
increasingly hard to come by as Ronald Harwood's well-tuned and intimate screenplay
exposes the family's initial incredulity, defiance and, shortly thereafter, fear at the hands of the Nazi extermination machine. Like most they are eventually
bundled onto a train bound for a "labor" camp.
Walking to the train Wladyslaw tells his sister "It's an odd time to say this I know but I wish I knew you better." Wladyslaw never boards the death train--he's pulled from the ranks by a Jewish police sympathizer and slips away
unnoticed--but it's the last time he sees any of his family members alive.
"The Pianist" clocks in at two-and-a-half hours, although a lengthy sequence
late in the film (in which Wladyslaw simply hides from his oppressors first in a German District apartment, then a hospital, then an abandoned attic) could
have been trimmed considerably. While epic in scope it's the little things that make "The Pianist" such a compelling film experience: a family cutting a caramel purchased for 20 zlotys into six equal pieces; a can of pickles carried
as if a life preserver; a young girl holding a birdcage crying for her mother while rotting corpses and human filth litter the edges of the frame; the true meaning of gratitude in a world where a genuine "thank you" speaks volumes (Wladyslaw's
sister's response to her brother's comment at the train); and the film's title itself, a simple label that belies the inherent horrors of that time.
Both Polanski and Adrien Brody ("The Thin Red Line"), who portrays Wladyslaw
Szpilman (who died at age 88 in Warsaw) with a respect that can best be described
as reverential, received Academy Awards for their work here. Whether the film's
direction or lead performance was the best of 2002 is academic since there's no debating the passion and the precision that Polanski and Brody bring to the project.
A more personal but no less poignant film than "Schindler's List" or "Life
is Beautiful" (two similarly focused motion pictures of equal power), "The Pianist"
is a haunting tale of survival that helps us to further understand a horrifying
and unforgettable chapter in our constantly checkered history.
--
David N. Butterworth
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