Honest Portrayal Of Szpilman's Complex and Horrible Situation

Rating: 10/10 (13 January 2003)

Danger: Spoilers Ahead

I had an opportunity to see The Pianist this weekend, and I must say, I thought it was excellent - more so than I had expected, and I generally appreciate both Adrien Brody (who plays Wladyslaw Szpilman) and Roman Polanski.
I've seen pretty much every WWII and Holocaust film ever made or subtitled in English, and The Pianist is quite possibly the best (in my mind better than my previous 3 favorites of this genre: Europa Europa, Life is Beautiful, and Schindler's List). Have read pretty much every book on the subject I can find, also, I can say that The Pianist also strikes me as the most balanced and realistic portrayal of the situation - and indeed this may be a problem for some people. (Like Schindler's List and Europa Europa, The Pianist is based on a true story - and I think it conveys this story more convincingly than either of those films).
What I think makes the Pianist such an excellent film is that it accepts the moral ambiguity of people on both sides, and makes obvious the fact that opportunism as much as ideology played a part in the actions of individuals on both sides. One "villian" in the form of the Jewish Police officer also plays a beneficial part in the life of Szpilman. The unexpected hero in the form of the sympathetic German Hosenfeld does not reap any reward for his good deeds. Szpilman himself feels that perhaps he should have stood by his comrades more directly in various actions such as the Ghetto Uprising, and while everyone who has read about it thinks they understand "survivor guilt" Polanski and Brody do an excellent job of making you believe that Szpilman really feels it.
Some reviewers seem to have missed the point of the moral ambiguity, which I find disheartening. They say that the good Jews help Szpilman out of sympathy, ideology, and comraderie, and the Gentiles out of opportunism, guilt, and only because he is a great pianist. I felt that the film showed that both groups who helped Szpilman had reasons ranging through all of the above, and part of the truthfulness of the portrayal was that the "moral divide" was not so clear.
The scene with Hosenfeld, in particular, struck me as being indicative of the filmmakers' perspective on this. While many may believe that Hosenfeld doesn't kill Szpilman because he is a great pianist, the beginning of the scene, in which Hosenfeld questions Szpilman with no weapons drawn, calling none of his subordinates to him, and in a civil, human tone is indicative of the filmmakers' belief that this person's core beliefs have eaten through his indoctrination. Hosenfeld has no reason, within the context of the Nazi system, to bother to find out anything about Szpilman, yet he does. When Hosenfeld attempts to get out of the prison camp by saying he helped Szpilman, it seems a desperate attempt rather than one calculated during the time in which the tables were turned. It becomes the undeserved punishment of someone who, for no reason other than his own character, performed good deeds in a terrible situation (which he helped to create, but which others of equal anonymity who went unpunished did more to create and less to counter).
Similarly, the moral ambiguity is amplified by the pragmatics of the situation. When Szpilman's brother and sister choose to be with their family in "relocation", their actions read as "morally correct" but pragmatically quite stupid (as Szpilman himself comments). It calls into question whether or not it is equally morally correct to save yourself in order to carry-on the struggle to save not just yourself, but what is left of the community, perhaps even to join with Partisans in a direct attempt to change the situation. Szpilman recognizes the value of carrying on, but feels tremendous guilt about both abandoning his family and not joining in the Ghetto Uprising.
It is this moral complexity which makes The Pianist so compelling. It does not attempt to paint the picture in terms of "Good Jews" and "Bad Germans", but rather that both sides had their heroes, villians, and confused people who could be seen as both, and that not every good deed was rewarded or bad deed punished - which from my readings, and from the stories my grandmother has told me (such as my Grandfather's life being saved by a Ukranian SS officer), is much more honest and plays on-screen as more compelling and realistic. The film does this without overstating its point and falling into the trap wherein it tries to make Jews "equally culpable" for the Holocaust. Rather, it makes clear the morally complex situation into which people were thrown, and that each responded to it according to their own character.

I think Szpilman would find this film an appropriate interpretation of his writing, and I recommend both the film and the book to anyone who is interested in such topics.