The one thing that Spilzman clinged on

Rating: Null/10 (21 March 2003)

The subject of Roman Polanski's Palme d'Or-winning (and now, Oscar-nominee) film, 'The Pianist',isn't exactly new and provocative:the suffering of the Jews under the brutal and merciless rule of Adolf Hitler during World War II, when the Third Reich was ominously gaining power, the driving force of which was the assertion of Germany's superiority as a race and a nation.Or simply put, the Holocaust.
This has already been touched upon in some early films, like Germany's 'My Mother's Courage', Italy's 'Life is Beautiful', Sweden's 'Good Evening, Mr. Wallenberg' and, of course,Steven Spielberg's Oscar-winning 'Schindler's List' and 'The Last Days' (as a producer).Such works were already enough to break one's heart, to stir in the viewers such emotions as grief, fear and anger.With Polanski's latest work, who would want to visit an unpleasant and bleak territory once again?
Well, I daresay that it would be a lamentable mistake not to do so.As I go on with this piece, I hope that I'll be able to justify such assertion.
'The Pianist' is a quietly powerful and honestly moving true-life tale of individual survival in the face of massive destruction that was the Holocaust.The film opens with an actual, black-and-white footage of Warsaw, Poland in 1939, when the citizens were still able to go about their daily business in a relatively peaceful and joyous manner.But in the following scenes, all of this was about to dramatically change as the Nazis started to invade Poland, bringing forth misery and grief to the Poles, most specially to the Polish Jews--and this, ironical enough,in vivid colors!
If in 'Schindler's List' and 'Good Evening, Mr. Wallenberg', it was the collective suffering of the Jews that was the central focus, in 'The Pianist', Polanski chose to adopt a different approach:to center on the suffering of a single individual.And that individual was Wladyslaw Szpilman, who possessed deft hands in playing Chopin pieces on the piano and upon whose memoirs the film was based.
Although in the early part of the film, the viewers still get to witness the brutalization of the Jews by the SS guards, when they were rounded up, confined in blocked settlements and cramped ghettos, and finally brought to the labor and death camps, this is presented as happening right before the own eyes of Szpilman (an old man feeding on spilled food on the ground, a mother bewailing over the loss of her baby, a little girl looking for her mother, a young boy dying in the pianist's very arms) that the effect is one of muted grief and shock, both on the protagonist's and the viewers' part (unlike in 'Schindler' and 'Wallenberg', where the scenes of mass murder and deprivation were intended to bring about a forceful shock).And in the succeeding parts of the film, when it would be otherwise inevitable to show the hellish condition in the camps (as 'Schindler' and 'My Mother's Courage' did), all the horrors and ruins of the Nazi occupation are instead reflected in the physical and internal sufferings of Wladyslaw Szpilman.
In fact, there's a considerable part of the film, executed in a quietly riveting manner, where the viewers only see Szpilman, desolate, haggard and in fearful and anxious silence, going from one place to another within the completely-ruined Warsaw, for fear of being caught by the SS guards and alleviating hunger and thirst with whatever comes his way.Such an insufferable existence would have easily defeated the man, if not for the one thing that the Nazis haven't completely destroyed in him:his passion for music.Whenever the moment permits, Szpilman still gets to perform his Chopin pieces on the piano--even if only in his mind, for he can't already lay his fingers on the keys.The piano is his identity, his livelihood, his life;it's the one thing that enabled him to confront and live through the horrors of the Holocaust.
And 'The Pianist' is the masterpiece that enabled its maker, Roman Polanski (who was a young child at the time of the Nazi invasion of Warsaw and who turned down 'Schindler's List' when it was first offered to him by Spielberg), to finally come to terms with that tragic period in his country's history that he himself experienced.
To ignore 'The Pianist' just because one is wary of having to visit a 'familiar' landscape once again is to ignore the individual's gift and capacity for surviving the hardest and cruelest of times, as inspired by Szpilman in us, we who have our own share of sufferings, whatever the degree is.
Much of the film's life comes from no other than Adrien Brody, who commanded such a subtle and affecting portrayal of the downtrodden pianist.Polanski made the perfect choice of having him solely for the lead character (in the same way that Stanley Kubrick perfectly suited Malcolm McDowell in the role of the deviant youth in 'A Clockwork Orange').I couldn't think of any other actor who could've given justice to the delicate person of Wladyslaw (not even Nicolas Cage or Daniel Day-Lewis, Brody's fellow best actor nominees in this year's Oscars).
The 29-year-old actor doesn't need to utter a word to express his sufferings.It all shows in his sullen eyes and undernourished physique.All the brutalization and demoralization being undergone by all the other Jews in the film are movingly embodied by Brody (as Szpilman) himself.
I've already seen all the other films nominated for best picture in this year's Academy Awards.Truth to say, they don't hold a candle to Polanski's masterpiece when it comes to starkness of content and sincerity of emotions.