An Adventure - An Odyssey - A True-Life Apocalypse Now

Rating: Null/10 (11 January 2003)

Others have said it, but it bears repeating: What's remarkable about this film is that it is utterly lacking in melodrama and there is no contrived sentimentality. Also, there's not much of a "plot" in the normal sense. It doesn't need one. It is a historically accurate and sumptuously detailed chronicle of a civilized European city's (Warsaw, Poland) descent into hell, and one man's experience of it.
The protagonist, a pianist name Szpilman (pronounced "Shpeelman"), is a hero, but not in the classical Hollywood sense. He tries to look after his family; he tries to pull a young boy to safety (but only because the men who are savagely kicking the boy are on the other side of a tall wall); he smuggles a few firearms for the planned uprising against the Nazis. But when the uprising finally comes, he is watching from a distance--his fear and hunger having led him to seize an opportunity to escape the walled-off "ghetto" without second thoughts.
At first you're a little disappointed that he doesn't join in on the uprising. You want him to lift up a piece of furniture from the apartment where he is hiding and heave it onto the heads of the Nazis who are shooting his former comrades. But then you appreciate the honesty of the moment; you realize that this is a true story. He does what you or I would probably do--he sits, and cowers, and watches. He just wants to live.
After that, he does a lot of watching from windows, usually from quite a distance above street-level. This becomes quite odd. You wonder if the rest of the movie is going to be this guy watching the destruction of Warsaw from a window. He might as well be watching a documentary on television. This removal from the action might be bothersome, but the things we are watching are fascinating nonetheless, and this odd perspective again reinforces the appreciation of the fact that this is a true story. And, ultimately, it's not like television, because at any moment those bullets and flames and artillery shells can, and do, come flying through the window, and Szpilman is on the run again, in his hopeless quest for safety.
Fascinating and exhausting--you won't come away from this film feeling ennobled or enlightened or uplifted. You'll feel like a survivor from a world you hope you never experience first-hand, but a world that is as real as Warsaw 1944, Cambodia 1977, Rwanda 1994, Grozny 2000, Israel/Palestine 2003. (And the list could go on.)
One more thing: Plan on sticking around through the entirety of the closing credits. It's just a pair of hands playing a piano, but it's nice music, and it will give you a welcome chance to decompress before returning to your world, and you won't be the only one sitting there.