Very well done however...

Rating: 7/10 (21 January 2003)

Ya know...what I liked most about that film was the piano playing. Truly some excellent playing. It was a good film, kept me there, taught me something. Yet it didn't grab me by the balls and yank me in. There was one main thing amongst a couple that prevented that. The lead actor. If not for him, I believe that film could have been so much more gripping.
He seemed so...'relaxed' with everything that was going on. Oblivious, non effected as he struts around town, in his manicured suit while enemy forces steal foot after foot of it. Everyone was effected in one way or another yet I felt and saw none from him. While on the lamb, with each person that stuck their necks out on the line for him, he thanked only 'once' that I remember. The German officer pianist. Other then that, I didn't see despair, true fear, anxiety let alone horror. Where was his humility? Thankness in his eyes or even a gesture due these people risking life and limb for his safety. The only time I saw some sort of connection to what was going on around him was toward the end when he was dirty, bearded, hungry and walking as if an old man. This is when I saw 'some' union with the character that should have been there progressively growing all along. And the sad thing about that was it was the time he hand the least bit of lines.

Roman Polanski did a good job with this film other then casting and directing the lead. Showed some detail of things we've seldom touched in other films of its subject. The progression to loss of rights not only as citizens yet human beings. Comes to mind is when the Father, walking in the street, was degraded by a slap to the face then forced to walk only in the gutter by that hate monger of a soldier. Without showing the people dying in the gas chambers or starved to death, he showed the step by step process from the identifying arm bands, to the segregation into a small section only to be walled in. To the scene of herding them to a waiting point for the train to ultimately show the baggage left behind, leaving our memories to paint the gruesome picture of what became them.
I liked the film, I was glad I experienced it yet, of all characters, the lead kept me on the outside preventing me to fall within.