Chilling, would be an understatement of the emotions felt after watching "The Pianist". Director, Roman Polanski portrays an extremely vividrecount of one man's struggle for survival in a world overtaken by prejudice, war, and hostility. This movie is part "The Fugitive" and part "Schindlers List," and is more than just a film, but also a lesson in perhaps the most abhorrent event in world history.
Polanski relives the Holacaust in a true story based upon the 1946 book by the protagonist, Wladyslaw Szpilmann. Adrian Brody plays the intense lead role of the Jewish pianist who loses everything, but his musical talent and will to survive. Schpielman, is a classical pianist on the radio in Warsaw Poland, when Nazi Germany takes over Eastern Europe, and his world and the world of all European Jews change forever.
Perhaps the first half of the movie is the most dramatically intense as we are vividly shown how shockingly horrible the acts of the Holocaust were. We are shown Szpilmann's close nit family deal get torn apart by the Nazis. From being a comfortable middle class family, they are stripped of everything they've worked their entire lives for and left to their deaths in concentration camps. It is during this period of the movie, that we are shown heart wrenching moments of family separation that will make you ask, "why"? If you are sensitive to violence and sights of death, then this picture has the potential to stir a stomach ache, as Polanski keeps pounding us with vivid and hostile image after image. Polanski, himself a Holacaust survivor has encompassed the scenery of the film in morbid colors of grey, brown, and white, which helps transport the viewer to the ghetto way of life for the Jewish population. Remarkably, he manages to never include the lively colors of green or blue throughout the movie
Beneath all this gut wrenching drama, Schpielman played by Adrian Brody, is a story upon itself. Brody, who previously played a punk rocker in Spike Lee's "Summer of Sam," now puts forth his most remarkable acting job, and already seems to have nabbed an Oscar nomination, along with the film itself, for best picture.
With the rest of his people getting deported to the camps, Szpilman is the only person in his family to survive and so begins a four year ordeal of living on the run and hiding from the Germans. No home, no job, nothing, but his spirit, which has already been broken by seeing his family and friends swept away. He stays in shelters and given food from a few good hearts in the ouside world, who were themselves risking their own lives for supporting him. As the movie progresses, Brody becomes more shaggy and thin, and eventually plays an erie resemblance to American Taliban, John Lindh Walker.
According to an interview in the LA Times with Brody, he became so thin to portray his role, that even acting became exhausting and difficult. He described his feelings about the role, "I felt that I had a great deal of responsiblity in portraying an actual historic figures, especially someone who survived the Holocaust in hiding."
The second half of the move continues in a long story of survival and escape, in which Szpilman could never play his beloved piano as a fear of generating noise and becoming discovered. The majority of the movie centers around the protagonist and we learn a bit about the people he meets in his ordeal, who all played small supporting roles.
The movie builds to a climatic ending with an unplanned run in with a German officer in a blown up barrack. The sudden confrontation, prokes an ironic ending, by summarizing the end of the war, and the extensive course of time that Szpilman had dilligently found the will to survive and keep his spirit alive.
If you can appreciate and enjoy a documentary look at recent history through the lens of a legendary director, along with a breakthrough acting performance from Brody, the The Pianist is worth checking out. You will leave the movie with a better understanding and appreciation of strong human character. If you are looking for a good comedy or date movie, I highly suggest you pass on this one.
