The Pianist (2002)

Directed by: Roman Polanski | 150 minutes | drama, war, biography | Actors: Adrien Brody, Thomas Kretschmann, Frank Finlay, Maureen Lipman, Emilia Fox, Ed Stoppard, Julia Rayner, Jessica Kate Meyer, Michal Zebrowski, Wanja Mues, Richard Ridings, Nomi Sharron, Anthony Milner, Lucy Skeaping, Roddy Skeaping

The life of director Roman Polanski is eventful. The Polish-Jewish Polanski family had to leave Paris, where their son Roman was born in 1933, in 1937 because of the growing anti-Semitism in the city of lights. Little Roman survived the bombing of Warsaw, but his mother died in a concentration camp. He lost his beloved Sharon Tate years later when the actress and their unborn child were murdered in their own home by followers of Satanist cult leader Charles Manson. And in the late 1970s, he became persona non grata in the United States because of his alleged relationship with an underage girl. He has not been in the country since 1978. As a result, he was unable to receive the Oscar for best director for his film ‘The Pianist’ in 2003. An Oscar he well deserved.

‘The Pianist’ is the most personal film Polanski has made to date. He previously caused a furore with films such as ‘Chinatown’, ‘Rosemary’s Baby’, ‘Repulsion’ and ‘Tess’. Very different films than the realistic story about the pianist Wladyslaw Szpilman. Polanski based this film on Szpilman’s autobiography, but he can also speak for himself about the matter, since in his younger years he was pressed hard against the horrific facts of the Second World War. He always wanted to film his childhood memories. When Steven Spielberg asked him to make ‘Schindler’s List’ ten years ago, however, he wasn’t ready. When Szpilman’s autobiography was re-released in 1998, it gave him the right leads to make a film.

At the beginning of the film, the viewer is introduced to the Szpilman family in Warsaw in 1939. The first signs of impending doom are already showing themselves: Jews are not allowed to show themselves in parks, they are obliged to wear blue stars of David and they are allowed to have a limited amount of money. However, it gets worse. The Szpilman family is forced to move to the ghetto and then to barracks, eventually ending up in line for the deportation trains. The young Wladyslav is separated from his family here and from this moment on everything is just a matter of survival for him. The rest of the film shows his hardships and his ‘struggles with life’. He ends up going from one hopeless situation to another, but his love for music keeps him going and eventually even saves his life. Nothing more is heard of his family…

Polanski films the story without too many frills, in a simple, apparently unmoved style. Dead people on the street are almost taken for ‘normal’. ‘The Pianist’ is a film made with humility and intelligence and while it is not Polanski’s own holocaust story, it is clear that this is the film he has been waiting for all his life. Pawel Edelman shot the film beautifully, full of deep dark brown tones. What the film mainly shows is the uncanny mixture of the arbitrary, personal sadism of individual German soldiers and the brutality of the system they represent. Polanski wisely refrains from comment and lets the facts speak for themselves.

The choice for Adrien Brody as Szpilman was the right one. The then relatively unknown actor underwent an impressive slimming cure to make his character look unhealthy, almost like a ghost by the end of the film – and thus of the war. Plus, in the second half of the film, he’s pretty much the only character that comes into view when he’s seeking shelter in the desolate and apocalyptic ghetto. Through a series of astonishing escapes, he narrowly manages to stay out of the hands of the Nazis, only to become isolated and at the mercy of strangers. A sublime achievement that Brody manages to carry that heavy burden with only facial expressions and body language (because speaking does not do much for the modest Szpilman). It was therefore quite right that he received the Oscar for best actor. The other actors, including Thomas Kretschmann – later known for his roles in ‘Der Untergang’ and ‘King Kong’ – play marginal roles; everything revolves around Szpilman.

The award-winning ‘The Pianist’ is often compared to that other acclaimed war drama in which a person is the central pivot, ‘Schindler’s List’. An important difference between the two films is that ‘The Pianist’ places less emphasis on melodrama and sentimentality. This is apparent from the fact that the scene in which Szpilman says goodbye to his family only lasts a few minutes. Also, at the end of the film, the viewer does not get an overview of what happened to everyone (only from Szpilman himself and the German officer Hosenfeldt). Polanski about this: “I wanted to stick as close as possible to reality and avoid any Hollywood-style make-believe.” The director provides us with so many heartbreaking and heartwarming details that this ‘down-to-earth’ approach turns out to be the most respectful and the only right one.

Polanski has outdone itself, because ‘The Pianist’ is truly a masterpiece, a film that keeps haunting your mind. It is therefore incomprehensible that the Oscar for the best film of 2002 went to the overrated ‘Chicago’…