An Ode to the Triumph of the Human Spirit

Rating: 9/10 (14 February 2010)

The Pianist is one of the most beautiful movies ever made. It describes the life of Polish pianist Wladyslaw Szpilman, a meek, ordinary man living in Warsaw when World War II starts. His life up until then is a bed of roses: he's a young, attractive man, and he plays piano over the radio. People know him and admire him.
The war changes everything and all of a sudden Szpilman, a Jew, becomes one of the many victims of Nazi Germany. What the movie depicts is the complete breakdown of his ordinary life and his struggle to survive in the Warsaw Ghetto, hidden from the authorities.
Directed by Roman Polanski, the movie is evidently brutal in its depiction of cruelty, or rather the banality of cruelty. Polanski shows horrible acts in the most, non-dramatic fashion: wheelchair-bound people being thrown off windows; children being beaten to death; people being shot for asking questions. He shows Szpilman and his family breaking apart: they go to the camps, with the certainty of death; Szpilman manages to run and becomes a wanderer in the empty Ghetto, surviving thanks to the good will of people, and to his own resourcefulness. Hidden in an apartment, he witnesses the world from a window, waiting for the end. From here he witnesses the Uprising, a heroic but failed attempt by the Jews to fight back the Nazis.
Bleak as the movie is, The Pianist also has a lot of humor, even some comic relief, as well as an emphasis on the brighter side of human existence. It's quite easy to create misery and draw pity from a viewer. But Only great art knows that life is never simple or reducible to one view. Darkness and light, ugliness and beauty, despair and humor always exist hand-in-hand. No scene shows that more accurately than the ending, in which Szpilman is saved by the most unlikely of people.
Adrien Brody is magnificent in this movie. Although he's not an actor I like, because he seems to take a personal glee in choosing horrible movies to star in, he nevertheless gives life-defining performance here, as the embodiment of the human will to survive against all adversities. Thomas Kretschmann, in his short role, was unforgettable too.
After decades making masterworks, Roman Polanski was finally rewarded with an Oscar. Not only that but he was rewarded for one of his best movies. Ronald Harwood, who adapted Szpilman's autobiography, also deserved his Oscar, as well as Brody himself. On a final note, Pawel Edelman, the director of cinematography, contributed to making this movie the wonder it is, in his composition of every shot. His work in this movie should put him alongside great DPs like Roger Deakins and Robert Richardson. Great movies are a synthesis of many aspects, and few movies bring them together so seamlessly and perfectly as The Pianist.