Wonderful and Terrible. SPOILER WARNING

Rating: Null/10 (5 February 2003)

Roman Polanski's new movie, "The Pianist" is a truly gripping, devastating, heart-felt, unsentimental piece of work. I urge you, if you have not seen it already, to do so before you read anything more about it (including this review). You need to come to the film cold, as it were, knowing as little as possible in advance, so that its effect will be as powerful as possible. This is what I did. I sat in the cinema, chatting quietly during the ads and trailers, preparing myself mentally for what I expected to be a reasonably harrowing but ultimately uplifting experience. The film began. My initial reaction upon seeing Maureen Lipman and Frank Finlay was a slight smirk and a minor panic: Oh God, brit thesps over-doing it. Nothing is more horrifying than the sight of Brit thesps over-doing it. Or so I thought. Because shortly after this panic there was more to concern me. Firstly, the Brit thesps were not over-doing it at all. They were instead giving subtle, measured, moving performances. How bizarre. Secondly, about ten minutes into the film, a gang of nazis stroll into an apartment and casually drop a man from his wheelchair out over the balcony and onto the street below. This is all shown from the point of view of our heroes in the apartment opposite. It all takes place in one long, agonising, heart-stopping take. The entire cinema gasps in horror. All of a sudden we realise just how grim and unflinching this film is going to be. From then on, things get worse (if that is at all possible) with horror piled upon horror in the most matter-of-fact way. Bodies lie in the street. Citizens of the ghetto bicker with each other over scraps of food, spill the food and then lick it up off the floor in desperation. Nazi thugs (as opposed to all the nazi non-thugs...) force Jews to dance, shoot them in the head whenever they feel like it, drive over their dead bodies, etc. etc. Then, as The Pianist's family is locked into the train carriage never to be seen again (the door slamming shut on their screams) he is alone in this insane world, suddenly forced to survive. He is not a good or bad person. He is certainly not a hero. If anything he is rather selfish and introverted. Which only makes this film more realistic and moving. We find ourselves imagining what it would be like to be in his situation. What would we do? There is no point mourning the loss of loved ones. That won't help anyone. Nor is there any point fighting. The Warsaw uprising begins (the fight scenes here are startlingly believable) and then ends in a rout by the nazis. The Pianist watches from his hiding place several storeys above the city. He is a detached observer rather than a participant. He is, perhaps, even a coward, running away from, rather than confronting the enemy. While working on the building gang he does get involved in helping the resistance, but escapes before the fighting begins. All the time we think: what would I do? We would probably do the same: Hide, run, survive. Defiantly avoiding sentimentality at all points, Polanski is in full command of his material here. Adrien Brody as our "hero" is superb. His transformation from elegant, attractive man about town to shivering, starving, desperate wreck is an amazing performance. Towards the end, as he hangs on to his tin of what? Some sort of fruit? with pathetic determination, he is a terrible vision of a man reduced to almost nothing. But still there is the spark in his eyes, and of course, as luck would have it, there is a piano. Which is what saves him. And there is a coat, which almost gets him killed. "Why the fucking coat?" "Because I'm cold." Note, by the way, that the line is not, "Because I'm f***ing cold" which would have been a nice gag, but fake. "Because I'm cold" is achingly sad and small and true. Like I said, Polanski and his screen-writer (the inestimable Ronald Harwood) are in full command of their material. There is not a single false move, not a single mistake. The film is beautiful and cold and terrible and sad and genuinely great. Unlike that other holocaust movie to which it will no doubt be compared, "Schindler's List", this is not at Oscar-Machine, but a moving and honest portrayal of human cruelty and desperation. It is also, in case you haven't worked it out already, a masterpiece.