Dir. Roman Polanski, 2002, UK/Fr/Ger/Neth/Pol, 148 mins
Cast:
Adrian Brody, Thomas Kretschmann, Frank Finlay, Maureen Lipman, Emilia Fox
Already, comparisons are being drawn between The Pianist, the new film from Roman Polanski, and Schindler's List (1993). The man who had previously declined the directorship of the film adaptation of Thomas Keneally's novel had, by implication, set himself the most momentous of tasks: to honestly portray a real life tale of the Warsaw ghetto without emulating, or appearing to emulate, the tone and scale of Spielberg's masterwork.
In truth, there is no escaping a comparison between the two, and it is a remarkable testament to both films that the one actually appears to complement the other. Polanski seems almost to concede this in appointing Allan Starski, a man whose work on Schindler's List gained him an Oscar, as production designer on The Pianist. The films also share the same costume designer in Anne Shepherd and, similarly, Lew Rywin as a producer. However, where Schindler's List stylistically and thematically plays on the emotions, The Pianist presents a less sensational, low-key tale of an individual, with the pathos growing organically from the realism.
The Pianist is based on the 1946 book "Death of a City", the memoirs of Wladyslaw Szpilman (played in the film by Adrien Brody), who went on to become one of Poland's greatest musicians and composers. Managing to escape deportation to the Treblinka extermination camp, Szpilman faces the suffering and degradation that is day-to-day life in the ghetto, until he manages to escape and live as a fugitive amidst the ruined city.
The young Szpilman is well groomed, with the quiet superiority of knowing his own self-worth. It is the erosion of that inner pride, from the dapper man in the hat, to the emaciated, wild-haired figure in dirty clothes and ragged sleeves, that is the film's greatest achievement. The earlier scenes with the family, headed by Maureen Lipman and Frank Finlay, are most emotive as Szpilman's comfortable, middle-class background struggles to retain itself. The family seems detached from events, quoting stories they've heard, gossiping around the dinner table, performing the rituals they have played everyday of their lives.
Having established the everyday, Polanski and screenwriter Ronald Harwood begin to chip away at the very core of its existence, with events gathering momentum until, finally, the Szpilman's are waiting to board the train to the death camp. They carry with them a sense of disbelief, of 'how did we get here?' and it is here that Polanski has provided us with a powerful cinematic reminder that these atrocities were perpetrated towards just very ordinary people, not unlike you or I. It is very easy, thanks to the deluge of images we see in the media, to grow desensitised to the human face of the Holocaust. Polanski reminds us of the people behind the cliché. Besides the horror of the genocide of an entire race of people was the systematic theft of everything that made a person an individual. Polanski tracks their degradation by the abundance or lack of food, from the relatively sumptuous family meal times, to all the family scrambling to find their last pennies to buy a small, over-priced candy bar, which they feast upon having carefully divided it between them with a penknife.
Hardly ever do we see the Germans from their own point of view; no Amon Goeth figure to provide a glimpse into the Nazi psyche. Like the Jews themselves, we receive no insights, which makes the actions of the perpetrators all the more incomprehensible. It is in successfully portraying these elements, with an understated sense of loss and futility, that Polanski has indeed managed to convey how it must have felt for him, a Polish-Jew, to live in this place, at this time. In so doing, he has quietly created his most personal work to date.
Jean Lynch
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