Warsaw, 1 9 3 9. Jewish pianist Wladyslaw Szpilman plays live on the radio, but this is disrupted when Nazi Germany invades Poland, annexing it. Szpilman and his family—father, mother, brother Henryk, sisters Regina and Halina—decide to stay in the city, but the Nazi occupation imposes discriminatory laws against 400,000 Jews in the city, who have to wear the star of David and are deported to live in a ghetto. Szpilman's entire family is deported in a train to the Treblinka concentration camp, but he is taken out of their ranks by the Jewish Ghetto Police, thus saving his life. Szpilman is able to get smuggled out of the ghetto by the resistance and given an apartment nearby. He has to run again after the Warsaw Ghetto uprising, and hide in another building. World War II causes famine and the Nazi unit destroys the city, but he is given food and help by a Nazi officer, Wilm Hosenfeld, who allows him to hide in an attic. After the end of the war, Szpilman recovers and resumes playing piano at concerts.
Based on the autobiography of Wladyslaw Szpilman, "The Pianist" gives a highly authentic depiction of one experience of the worst genocide in human history, the Holocaust, showing once again that war movies are sometimes basically 'grounded' horror movies. Once the viewers start watching it, they have to watch it to the end due to its gripping, gruesome depiction of the persecution of Jews during the totalitarian dictatorship of the Nazis in occupied Warsaw, which basically becomes a city-character in the story itself, showing deep scars towards the end, and some of the moments are so terrifying that you will not be able to stomach watching this movie more than twice. Adrien Brody is excellent as the Jewish pianist Szpilman, and his point-of-view becomes the point-of-view of the viewers, as well. The first two thirds of the film are the most shocking, abounding with moments he wrote down, even though he didn't understand why nor knew the context in most of them. The story is able to transmit a feeling of this dread to the viewers, as if they feel it on their own skin. For instance, Jews are all resettled to the Warsaw Ghetto, and observe how the Nazi soldiers are building a wall between two residential buildings, to prevent the inhabitants from leaving.
In one disturbing sequence, Szpilman and his family observe from the window how a Nazi unit arrives in a car during the night, goes to the building across and enters the room of a Jewish family inside. They order all inhabitants inside to stand up, and the only man who is not able, because he is in a wheelchair, is thrown out the balcony to the ground, to his death. The inhabitants are brought down and then seen running away as the Nazis shoot them all, and then enter the car and run over some corpses as they leave. No explanation is given. It's all just random episodes of cruelty, which heightens the feeling of uncertainty. Due to starvation in the ghetto, one man is even seen licking porridge dropped on the street. The most emotional moment happens subtly—Szpilman, his family and hundreds of Jews are ordered to march towards a train, and he turns around towards his sister Halina and says: "It's a funny time to say this, but..." - "What?" - "I wish I knew you better." He is then taken out of this row by the Jewish Ghetto Police, while his family is sent to the train, and he never sees them again. Roman Polanski directs the movie in a rather conventional, straightforward, but standard way, not managing to make it more cinematic than just a docudrama, nor to show more directing craftsmanship (except in the process of the cinematography gradually draining the colors with time, to show the decay of Warsaw during the war), and the flaw is that Szpilman is such a passive character who never does anything but observe, run and hide, but since this is based on his true story, it has to be accepted in such form. Him observing becomes a symbol for the viewers themselves observing, not being able to do anything but just see a glimpse of events of horrible history through a movie. As film critic Nenad Polimac contemplated in his review of "Saving Private Ryan", why do some directors display the "De Mille syndrome" which awakens their inspiration the most from scent of blood in their movies? That is something for the psychologists to answer.
Grade:+++
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