Wrenching but poetic portrait of one Polish musician's Holocaust

Rating: 10/10 (21 May 2006)

This is for me the most poignant and powerful of all the movies depicting the Holocaust...the true life story of talented Polish pianist, Wladyslaw Szpilman. Normally I would scoff at descriptions of a film as poetic or artistic, but this one truly is both. The beautiful classical music adds passion to a tale that is already heart wrenching beyond words. The movie features magnificent cinematography, especially the winter street scenes and devastated, shell shocked buildings of Warsaw.
As the film begins, Szpilman is playing a polonaise for a Warsaw radio station when a bomb impacts his studio. After this, the story continues on with the despicable discriminatory laws against Polish Jews, their forced resettlement into the Warsaw Ghetto, and the herding of ghetto residents (including all of Szpilman's family) off to concentration camps. Although he personally is spared the camps, Szpilman is conscripted into a German labour compound. He then escapes into hiding as a Jewish refugee, forced to take whatever assistance he can from others, usually complete strangers. During this period he helplessly witnesses, from the window of his hide out, the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising of 1943 and Warsaw City Revolt of 1944.
Adrien Brody is absolutely brilliant in his Oscar winning role as the pianist. Although many events are depicted pertaining to both family and strangers surrounding him, the movie focuses on one particular Jew's personal story, thus making it particularly compelling. We see all the unfolding horrors through Szpilman's eyes, and Brody conveys such emotion with them. This is a gifted musician but otherwise, quite an ordinary person who feels constant anguish at the atrocities around him. Yet he is unable to help, instead forced to struggle for his own survival. He engages in no futile heroics but does everything possible to stay alive, ferret out food sources, and avoid detection by the Nazis as he moves from one hiding place to another.
There are so many riveting, horrendous scenes. Szpilman puts a human face on the initial loathsome laws when he is unable to go to the cafe or park with his new cellist friend, Jews being strictly forbidden. Later German soldiers force absurd dancing among ill matched ghetto couples in order to amuse themselves. Then much worse...A man in a wheelchair is dropped off a high building for refusing to stand up when Nazi soldiers enter his apartment. Later an entire line of Jewish men are forced to lay down and then systematically shot in the head one by one. When the Jews are being rounded up from the ghetto, one mother inadvertently smothers her baby to stifle its cries that would betray the family's hiding place.
The Szpilman family drama is itself heartbreaking. As they are standing in line awaiting transport to the concentration camp, Szpilman tells his sister that he wished he knew her better, implying fears that they may be separated forever. Perhaps the most poignant scene is again while they are awaiting deportation, when the father divides a tiny caramel in enough pieces for each family member to have a minute bit.
While the cruelty toward the Jews is well captured, the Jewish people in this story are portrayed not as saints but as real three dimensional individuals, which actually makes the story even more believable and compelling. Szpilman comes from a typical imperfect family, for example the members bickering over where they are going to hide the family's money. Polanski is unafraid to portray some of the Jews as assisting the Nazis by becoming Jewish police within the ghetto, in order to protect their own interests. Eventually we see a German officer with compassion, not all are evil monsters.
The film pays tribute to the music of the Polish composer, Chopin. Szpilman is himself a gifted pianist, whose talents must lay dormant during these horrific years, like all the other talents of countless other Jews...those that were fortunate enough to survive at all. The film wrenchingly depicts how much Szpilman misses classical music and his piano playing. In one scene, his fingers hover in rapid movement over the keys as he imagines the beautiful music of that particular piece, sound being forbidden lest it lead to his detection. Later when asked to play for the German officer, he conveys such intense passion. Perhaps a wee bit rusty at first, his fingers soon dance dramatically across the keyboard pouring forth the haunting Chopin Ballade, as Szpilman is overwhelmed with emotion. Some claim that he believes he is playing for his life or fears this will be his last performance ever, but I think he is simply lost in the pure joy of being able to play his exquisite music again, at least this once.
For me, The Pianist far surpasses even Schindler's List. This gripping story of one man's will to survive is definitely the best Holocaust film ever made.