Powerful, moving, - but who is Szpilman?

Rating: 8/10 (5 February 2005)

I won't repeat what so many others have already said. Yes, this is undoubtedly a moving, shocking and powerful movie of what happened to the Warsaw Jews during World War 2 - a great film by Polanski.
I watched it the other day and something kept nagging at me. Szpilman, the pianist protagonist, reminded me of another film character but I couldn't place him. Then the penny dropped: Szpilman is another Dr. Zhivago.
Both character are essentially outsiders to what happens around them, the momentous events of the Russian Revolution and its aftermath, the Warsaw ghetto and the Holocaust. Both are introvert artists who live in a world of their own, relating to most people and events around them in barely more than a superficial, disconnected way. They only make the weakest of efforts to get involved in, and influence, the turmoil of their time. Szpilman appears to be even more of a loner than Zhivago, who at least had the ability to fall in love with Lara. The Pianist is a single man who devotes his life to nothing but his music. His last words to his sister are significant: "I regret not knowing you better." Then, as he escapes destruction through no heroic action of his own, he becomes a total outsider to the violent events of the Ghetto uprising and the final battle for Warsaw. He watches the horrors from the windows in his hideouts, silent, barely reacting. He only comes briefly alive when he finds himself alone with a piano, which he can't play for fear of being discovered - but he plays it anyway, fingers in the air over the keys, hearing the music without making a sound.
When he has almost reached the end of his strength, barely surviving thirst, hunger and exhaustion, he is saved by a humane German soldier who makes him play the piano. As he does so, you see him coming alive through the powerful effect the music has on him. It almost seems as if through all his preceding suffering he has missed his music more than his family and friends who have all been wiped out by the Nazis. This scene now reminds me so much of Zhivago who sits alone in the depth of winter, in his remote house on the steppe, writing poems as this only means of survival.
Eventually, Szpilman is saved by the tides of war, and we see him at the conclusion of the film playing the piano for a large audience in a grand concert hall. Yes, he made it through the Holocaust, and his artistic strength hasn't left him - but what has happened to his humanity after having witnessed so much brutality and suffering? Who is this man who can still find beauty in music? How does he deal with the loss of his entire family and those who helped him survive? We never get an answer to that. And don't get me wrong - it is through no fault of Adrien Brody who fully deserves his Oscar. No, the answer lies in the character of Szpilman himself, someone who, like Zhivago before him, survives the madness of the world by fleeing in himself. In doing so he makes it impossible for us to know him, or even really care. And that may be the weakest element of this otherwise great movie.