A monument to the things that never die

Rating: 9/10 (30 January 2003)

What does a country have when it has nothing? When it has been decimated, razed, conquered, humiliated? I remember the question being asked and answered once when I was in Poland. The answer was, its art. The poverty of a nation has been transformed into a love and respect for their great artists  a sincerity that is apparent everywhere you go in Warsaw, from the Opera House to the Old Town. Figures like Chopin represent something that cannot be destroyed by bombs, by external powers, by materialism.
What sets The Pianist apart from other holocaust' movies is this ennobling of art, the spirituality of music especially, which has the power to live on, even to cross barriers of race and hatred. In its final analysis, it represents a triumph of the spirit rather than another bleak and horrific account of the Nazi incarceration and obliteration of Jews.
(contains some minor plot spoilers): The film's authenticity is movingly enlightened by Director Polanski's own experiences, which included escaping from a Nazi concentration camp as a child in WW2. Comparisons with Schindler's List (a film he turned down the offer of directing) are inevitable  yet in the Piano we see not only European cinema's attention for detail, of lovingly crafted scenes that sweep us away with poetic beauty and simplicity, and characterisation that has us truly believing in the individuals and feeling with them, but also a touching lack of bitterness: it is a German officer, moved by the purity of the Jewish pianist's music, that saves him  a scene that in other hands could have been rendered overly simplistic is given depth and grandeur by the skill of Polanski and a remarkable performance by Adrien Brody  as well as a fantastic story that has been based fairly closely on actual events.
Szpilman (Brody) is a Jewish pianist who is ghetto-ised when the Nazis invade Poland. A frail and delicate man, he is ill-equipped to cope with the rigours imposed, or the political shenanigans his colleagues use to try and gain favour. His music is his continual companion. Interestingly, the music featured on the soundtrack during his incarceration is all (if I remember correctly) German  Bach and Beethoven. It is only when, as a feeble, starving and barely human derelict, the threat is finally lifted from him and he plays the music of Chopin from his beloved Poland. Gentle, fragile music that, in all its fragility, rises phoenix-like to win the respect of the oppressor. The Pianist goes immediately onto my all-time list of greatest movies and I'm already eagerly looking forward to a second viewing.