Intelligent and Powerful

Rating: 10/10 (1 February 2003)

"The Pianist" is the kind of assured, confident movie that only an older director can make. Sure, directors like Wes Anderson and Quentin Tarantino have exhibited prowess beyond their relatively young years, but the allure of a seasoned professional is unmistakable and inimitable. He knows you'll be impressed through sheer storytelling magic, and won't jump through hoops to get the audience from point A to point B.
I have read Michael Medved's deliriously inane comments on film and film criticism, and he wrote Roman Polanski's best work since "Chinatown" off as simply a "Holocaust drama." I disagree. Yes, the main character is Jewish in the nineteen thirties and forties, and the Holocaust is used as a backdrop, but this is a simple story of survival. Ronald Harwood's screenplay does not go into tons of exposition about who the Nazis are or what they're doing there, and doesn't use insulting little title cards to sum up the situation at the beginning of the film. It respects the audience's intelligence. We know what the Nazis did, and it doesn't labor the point.
Polanski is gentle, yet masterful, letting the story flow instead of yanking it one way or the other. It uses a minimum of dialogue, and doesn't try to convince us of what is wrong or right. It expects us to know better, and therefore doesn't enforce a kind of ham-handed moral high ground that would be easy to trip over in a film like this. It accepts everyone involved as human beings instead of faceless and soulless killing machines in gray.
The centerpiece of the film is Adrian Brody's performance as Wladyslaw Szpilman, the Polish piano player who watched his family get packed on a train heading to a concentration camp. With Polanski's spare direction and Harwood's lack of dialogue, Brody is the only thing to focus on. One should not underestimate how daunting of a challenge this really is. Actors have broken under lesser pressure, and something like this requires whoever plays the part to immerse himself wholly in the role; to become the character instead of looking like an actor going through the motions. Brody more than rises to the challenge. The soldier from Malick's "The Thin Red Line" and the punker from Lee's "Summer of Sam" vanish. Brody is Szpilman, it's as simple as that. The feat is superhuman.
"The Pianist" is everything a great movie should be. The direction, writing, acting, and everything else are exemplary. All so much so that they become invisible.
**** out of 4