Mixed emotions...

Rating: 3/10 (10 March 2008)

I have to say that I was left with very mixed emotions after watching this film. On the one hand, we have a supremely talented pianist, forced to endure what the vast majority of us will never have the misfortune to experience, surviving all the horrors of the Nazi regime; and on the other hand we have a man who is prepared to let his family go off to die while he runs away, leave his fellow Jews to fight with the Germans (while he runs away again) and allows everyone else to risk their lives in order to help him.
This man did nothing heroic to help himself, and certainly nothing heroic to help anyone else. His indifference to everyone apart from himself was almost unbearable. The only tears we ever saw were for himself towards the very end. No tears for his family, his friends, his people. The only emotion he ever showed was for Dorota, and let's not forget that her character was actually made up for this film, she was never in the book of his life. When you have to invent characters to try and help an audience to sympathise with someone then it speaks volumes.
Now, war does terrible things to people, so who am I to judge this man, but surely there are better stories from better people to tell than this one. Does this story justify a film being made, just because he was a good piano player? Is this a man that we can all look up to? I just don't get it.
I was left feeling that this man was something of a coward who only cared for himself. What exactly were they were trying to say with this film?