Less 'cinematic' yet more affecting than "Schindler's List" ...

Rating: 10/10 (1 June 2012)

To think that I avoided "The Pianist" for about 10 years because I expected a new "Schindler's List"! And I don't even mean that negatively.
I've watched Spielberg's film several times and know too well how painful Holocaust movies are, and while "Life is Beautiful" was a tragicomic fable and "Sophie's Choice" more of a character study relating a traumatic experience, I knew "The Pianist" would be on the same level of ambition and seriousness than Spielberg's film, if only because it was directed by Roman Polanski, a Holocaust survivor himself. I knew the movie would feature shocking arbitrary executions and poignant separations, so in a way, "The Pianist" was already having an impact on me without watching it. But this is not the only reason why I didn't feel the urge to watch it.
Part of the blame is to be put on the film itself although it was inevitably going to be compared with its 'glorious' predecessor. Speaking of my own experience, I was mislead by "The Pianist" and the movie trailers. I thought it was the story of a man who played music for the Nazis and his survival, and therefore found in the present's horror and gloominess a heaven of escapism in the inner, universal and timeless beauty of music. Wladislaw would have the state of mind of one of Schindler's factory workers with music as the same weapon as Guido's humor and optimism in "Life is Beautiful". Of course, I realize now how my preconceived ideas totally underestimated Roman Polanski and I hope this review redeems my 10 years of abstinence.
First, one must give to Spielberg what is Spielberg's and to Polanski what is Polanski's. "Schindler's List" is a better directed film but "The Pianist" is a better told story. And while the directing of Spielberg betrays sometimes the harshness of its subject by too much 'mise en scene', Polanski's ability to hook our hearts to the fate of Wladislaw Spillman, magnificently portrayed by Adrien Brody, and his family is beyond words. Indeed, we feel like part of this family. While the epic scope of "Schindler's List" provided a sort of moral aura to the victims, making the film a martyrdom's remembrance, "The Pianist" is simply the chronicles of a banal horror. And Polanski keeps an intimate, almost unnoticeable directing, to better convey the feeling that we're watching normal people whose lives are dramatically affected by an absurd War, and it's their very normality that emphasizes the cruelty of the Nazi treatment.
The film opens in Warsaw in September 1939 so those with a minimum of historical knowledge understand the implication. Wladislaw is playing Chopin in a studio when the first German bombings are heard, his family wants to leave but later, they learn in the radio that France and Britain entered the War. Relieved, they celebrate the news with a toast, and the relatively cheerful ambiance contrasts with the usual demonstrations of grief and pain. Of course, we know the worst is to come, but Polanski takes his time to get us immersed in the war's ambiance and letting us observe the progressive decline of the Spillmans, directly mirroring the atmosphere that probably prevailed within all the Jewish families.
Through the Spillman's perspectives, we get a more accurate idea of the nightmare endured by Polish Jews. When they're all parked in the Warsaw ghetto, before the inevitable evacuation, we witness gut-wrenching, intolerable, and acts of brutality, so unbelievably gratuitous and horrific, we never doubt that they're based on true stories, and that war, definitely, inspires the worst from humanity. In war, there's no room for dignity, for charity, for understanding, for God I would even say. As for violence, there is no scale, soldiers throwing off a balcony an old grandfather on a wheelchair because he couldn't stand is a horrifying sight, but maybe I expected these kind of moments so much that I was more shocked by the part where the soldiers made people dance together. Sometimes, humiliations are more impacting than random and arbitrary killings.
And again, the talent of Polanski is precisely not to have overplayed on the directing department: no 'Black and White', no special effects, no 'little girl in Red', just basic colors, as to sustain the feeling of a present, more real then more horrific. "Schindler's List" might be a better film for some, but it's still a film, while "The Pianist" is a survival story, raw and real. Not a hero, not a victim either, the main protagonist will sometimes count on his courage, sometimes on his good luck, sometimes on the help of good-hearted and understanding people, from any sides. There is a light of hope in the film, through music, at a time where humanity reached its lowest point, music was here to remind people, to remind Nazis what a waste the War was, a feeling incarnated by Adrien Brody's sad-looking eyes.
Again, don't expect a hero à la Oskar Schindler in Wladislaw, "The Pianist" shows the boldness of a period where cowardice was sometimes guided by survival instinct, where the desire to live could be more necessary than the desire to fight, because surviving left more voices to speak about the atrocities. "The Pianist" reveals those hidden subtleties that couldn't be truly expressed in epic movies. Some Jews didn't fight back precisely because the horrors of Auschwitz, Treblinka, Buchenwald had to be known, and ironically, this was one of the reasons that accelerated the exterminations' process. And some like Wladislaw had to hide not to make the sacrifices of the others unnecessary, those were tough times and no one is allowed to put a judgment... not us, anyway.
And this is why "The Pianist" is more affecting than "Schindler's List", and if one has any doubt, let's not forget, that Spielberg was born in 1946 while Roman Polanski is still a war survivor who lost his mother in a Death Camp.