Superb and very touching

Rating: 10/10 (14 February 2013)

This is a truly heart-wrenching story of one, sensitive man whose family are torn from him (never to be seen again, perished in the Holocaust) and about his survival over solitude, deprivation, starvation and terror whilst in hiding during the Nazi occupation of Warsaw. In my opinion it is one of the finest depictions of the holocaust (of which there are many all-consuming portrayals of only a fraction of the stories which occurred). Brody puts in a marvellous and utterly touching performance as Szpilman. The story is abound with terribly moving vignettes which depict the emotional and cultural breakdown of Warsaw's persecuted Jewish community as Nazi policy tightens around them; the overall inability of the community to stand-up to the systematic destruction of their neighbours; the acceptance to wear the Star of David armband (the scene where his father is hit by Nazis and forced to walk in the gutter rather than on the pavement); the arrogant survivalist attitudes of the Jewish Sonderkomando-police force; the young Jewish boy profiteering from petty food-stocks in the ghetto holding area; and then the opportunists, like Szalas, who manipulate Jewish fugitives in hiding outside of the ghetto.
The relationship between Szpilman and Hosenfeld may seem to come into the story far later than expected – about three quarters of the way through – but it is nevertheless the right moment, arriving at the most vulnerable time for both characters – and Polanski creates nothing short of a masterful 'forbidden fruit' by way of coupling the pair, united in their passion for the piano, but whereby the discovery of their friendship would spell immediate death. Superb. It is both touching and a reality check when Hosenfeld offers Szpilman his great-coat, adding afterwards that he has another, warmer one for himself in a slight, yet perhaps ashamed, departure from his humane self and a return to his Nazi persona. The dark humour which later follows up this parting-scene – (Russian soldier: "What's with the f*****g coat", Szpilman : "I'm cold") – was a welcome piece of comic relief however bleak the subtext. The film's ending is with both deep sadness for the lives lost and destruction wrought, and, with a staunch optimism for the future.
In my opinion "The Pianist" is one of the greatest Holocaust films made. The horrors are not forced upon us in the face, but they are presented using the eyes of one man, hidden away from it, seeing it only as an escapee and we get an understanding of its emotional scale to a far greater extent as we are forced to think and hide with him.