Playing for your life

Rating: 9/10 (5 January 2015)

Roman Polanski's "The Pianist", brings home the horror of the Holocaust through one man's struggle to survive the evil that relentlessly mounts around him.
Based on a true story, Władysław Szpilman (Adrien Brody) is a Jewish pianist who plays live music on the radio in Warsaw at the outbreak of WW2. A talented man he eventually discovers that his greatest talent may be for survival. He is not inordinately heroic, but he does take chances such as helping smuggle weapons into the Warsaw Ghetto. However, he is a witness to heroes. After being saved almost by accident from deportation to Treblinka as the Nazis clear the Warsaw Ghetto, he sees the uprising of the surviving Jews who refuse to go without a fight.
Later while sick with Jaundice, he witnesses another uprising as the Poles of Warsaw battle the Nazis for the city. Polanski handles the action scenes in a masterful manner. It is as though we are viewing events out of the window over Szpilman's shoulder.
Polanski has always been able to get feeling from his actors, but here he shows he can also handle a big canvas with epic scenes that can stand comparison with the work of David Lean or Steven Spielberg. It would be hard to find scenes more harrowing than the ones Polanski has recreated of the Warsaw Ghetto.
It may have been tempting to have a narrator fill us in on the complex historical events as the story unfolds, but Polanski tells this story without resorting to narration; the film has more immediacy without it. Although a fair amount of exposition is delivered through the character's conversations, it is seamless and allows Polanski to incorporate touches of wit often tinged with irony into a story that is anything but light.
Szpilman and his family soon discover that what at first appear to be ridiculous edicts about race segregation by the Nazis are in fact deadly serious with dire consequences for them all. Although much of this background has been covered in documentaries, movies and mini-series, it is presented here with fresh insight by Polanski.
In an inspired performance, Adrien Brody's Szpilman is buffeted by fate and is almost helpless to change the course of events. However he receives help from two women who knew him from his days playing the piano on the radio: a singer, Janina, and a Cellist, Dorata, played by Ruth Platt and Emelia Fox, who confusingly look a lot like each other. In another encounter, he is helped by a German officer (Thomas Kretschmann), who admires his playing.
"The Pianist" rivals "The Pawnbroker" in telling the story of how a decent man's life is torn apart by the Holocaust, while at the same time giving a sense of the enormity of one of the most horrific episodes in human history.