A missed opportunity

Rating: 7/10 (22 December 2005)

I should explain why I did not rate this film higher. I think it a good film. I think Adrien Brody did an incredibly good job. I think the film more than adequately portrayed the protagonist's near-death experiences. It is dramatic and life-affirming. Many scenes are memorable. Also, as an amateur musician, I can attest to how music can provide purpose, sanity, and sustenance in times of deprivation, pain and fear. Wladyslaw Szpilman was a truly remarkable man whose story of survival was worthy of honoring. But he did little to help others. He observed and suffered from the horrors of the ghetto, but he did little to confront them. Polanski singularly exalted Szpilman's personal survival, when he could have explored other aspects of Szpilman's story. For example, Szpilman's conduct of protecting himself -- and not joining with others, assisting others, or joining the Warsaw ghetto resistance -- was similar to the conduct of the Polish Resistance groups who refused to help the Jews in the Ghetto in spite of the fact that the Warsaw Ghetto uprising was at the time the more successful anti-Nazi effort being waged in Europe.
I don't fault Polanski for not exploring so many of the other issues that he could have raised -- just as I do not criticize Szpilman for not doing more to help others. But I think that the movie could have been better. It could have at least raised the question of selfishness and survival.
Of course, the film made the Holocaust more accessible and more palatable to a wider audience -- particularly to a non-Jewish audience. Szpilman seemed more like a Polish gentleman than the kind of "alien" Jews -- by that I mean the rural, shtetl-based Orthodox Jews -- that the many Poles hated and discriminated against, sometimes just as violently as the Nazis. I suppose that Polanski identified with Szpilman and was particularly horrified that the Holocaust would threaten the lives of cultured, assimilated Jews who were no different than their Polish neighbors. Of course, it is his prerogative to select what Holocaust story to tell. His film is similar to some of the films about Bonhoeffer and other Christians arrested by the Nazis. I just think that other films on this subject -- even those about non-Jews -- were much more illuminating, complex, and dramatic -- like "Schindler's List," "The Diary of Anne Frank," "Amen," and "The Grey Zone."