Very well done movie of a ghetto survivor

Rating: Null/10 (10 June 2003)

Although I'm going to make some criticisms of the movie, I want to first say that I think it's very finely done. The acting, the sets, the music, the lighting, the overall direction are first rate. We are moved again and again and reminded of man seeking survival at all cost. IT is definitely worth seeing - and it clearly deserved the honors it received.

Unfortunately, I don't think it's as wonderful as it might have been. It's very straightforward - there seem too few moments of imagination. Undoubtedly, the overall facts of Jewish life in Poland in the 1940s are of course going to bear similarities.
Yet, e.g., a survivor's hunt for food and water in civilian houses during W.W.II - I kept thinking "I've seen this before" - and Eureka! Yes, I had - in Empire of the Sun.
The separation of the Jewish family - some marked for the concentration camps and some not, the uprising in the ghetto - I kept thinking "Where have I seen this?" Oh, yes, in the miniseries, Holocaust.
The use of music as the counterpoint to Nazi horror and escape from death - where have I seen this before? Oh yes, Vanessa Redgrave in Playing for Time.
The railroad siding at which some are spared from the death camps - gee, I've seen that before. Oh yes, Sophie's Choice (which was far more gripping).
It's not that I dislike movies from or about the Holocaust. I think there's always room for more stories from the Holocaust - and I suppose Polanski is going to be drawn to it more than to, say, the horror of the imposed famine in Ukraine in the 1930s -- but I would like to see more imagination used in the telling.
(E.g., in Empire of the Sun, the juxtaposition of the dying breath from a woman's body and the protagonist's certainty he sees it merged into the mushroom cloud from Hiroshima - or the wonder at the stadium full of looted luxury taken by the Japanese - or the transformation of a prisoner of the Japanese from idolizing their strength to idolizing the Americans' strength - the last particularly was very human and seldom acknowledged in movies). Or in Lawrence of Arabia - the use of light is so extraordinary (the match being blown out, the figure of Lawrence along the tops of rail cars, etc.) These are striking memorable images -and unfortunately The Pianist doesn't have much that is distinctive visually.
Still and all, it's an excellent movie - well worth seeing.