Playing the Piano in No Man's Land

Rating: 9/10 (3 June 2003)

From the moment of horrific irony as the small family celebrates the declaration of war with a small party, thinking their lot is bound to be improved, to the searing agony of watching Szpilman gulp at a bucket of filthy water at the abandoned hospital, this movie provides such a realistic picture of the deterioration of a brilliant, famed artist into a starving, lone phantom that we cannot help but be overcome ourselves watching his desperate clawing at his locked door in the safehouse or his defiant efforts to open his solitary can of food in the abandoned mansion.
Yet this is not a movie just about the survival of his body. What many, many survivors of war and the Holocoaust lose at least temporarily is their purpose, the life of their souls, either to bitterness or madness, or simply confused by the wave after wave of remembered horror after horror. We learn in the climatic piano solo played for the German officer that Szpilman may have been reduced to starvation and hiding for his life, but the life of his soul, the purpose and spirit are still just as fiery and abundant and flourishing as ever. The Piano itself has saved him from insanity, the piano that has always waited, and the moment of their reunion is one of the most brilliant pieces of filmwork ever. It is a wonder to me that people question Brody's oscar win's legitimacy to the smallest degree after seeing this scene alone. This is simply a movie, like Schindler's List before it, that will go down in history.