The Pianist
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Movie Reviews of The Pianist
Movie Review: Polanski's Paean to Poland
Summary: 5 Stars
After suffering through the excruciating experience of viewing "The Ninth Gate", I despaired that a once creative and vital director had lost his touch. "The Pianist" more than compensates for that chaotic, unintended farce. Polanski has let the world know loud (and I do mean that literally and figuratively) and clear that he still possesses the artistic goods.
This is his first film since "Knife in the Water" to be set in his native Poland. His feeling for his native land rings forth in every frame. From the music of Chopin, to the scenes of the Warsaw trains on their way to Treblinka, packed to the absolute extreme with their human cargo, Polanski lets us experience, practically first hand, what it meant in the late 30s, early 40s, to be a Jew in Warsaw. It was precisely the wrong thing to be at precisely the wrong time in human history.
Whereas the other great Holocost movie of recent years "Schindler's List" relies so heavily on visual representation (though it does have a moving soundtrack), Polanski combines brutal images with high decibal sound to stun and startle us into a deeper, more visceral understanding of what the title character, Wladyslaw Szpilman, experienced as a young artist in WWII Poland. During one scene, a bomb explodes so loudly that I actually thought for a few seconds that my hearing had been damaged, as a ringing noise on the soundtrack synchronizes with Szpilman's gesture as he winces and cups his ear with his hand . That's about as visceral as I want to go in a cinema experience. It's also one aspect that wont be as effective at home, unless one is blessed with a state of the art sound system.
While this film is exceedingly stark, grim and shocking (you will understand from where the term "shock troops" derives), it also contains moments of great beauty and humanity. Even in moments of the most extreme deprivation and isolation, a human hand comes to Szpilman's assistance and helps him survive.
Oscar awards were certainly deserved for both Polanski and Adrian Brody (Best Actor). It is essentially their film. Though the supporting roles are well played, Brody is in every scene of the film, so it is his to carry. It is a bravura performance. He never overacts or overreacts. He subtly displays the gradual despair and increasing horror as Warsaw crumbles around him.
No matter how one feels about Polanski, personally, "The Pianist" proves that he remains among the top ten directors of his generation. This love letter to his native land is tinged with tears, a combination which renders it amazingly effective.
Movie Review: The Pianist - An extremely poignant true story!
Summary: 5 Stars
This extraordinary film serves skillfully as a poetic reminder of humanities startling capacity for insufferable cruelty towards one another and amazing capacity for kindness to one another in particularly difficult situations! Although there are several scenes throughout this film that are dreadfully difficult to watch it is a film that should be watched and the reminders it displays continued to be learned in the sincere hopes that nothing like this ever happens again in the future of humanity.It is of little wonder that this film that is based on a true story won three Academy awards; Best Actor for Adrien Brody, Best Director for Roman Polanski and Best (Adapted) Screenplay for Ronald Harwood. Adrien Brody's unforgettable performance is nothing short of stunning as he plays Wladyslaw Szpilman, a Jewish pianist caught up in the Nazi's war against the Jewish in Poland during World War II. This extraordinary film wouldn't have been as nearly successful without the exceptional performance given by all the supporting actors in this film as well who all deserve as much praise as possible for their parts.
Strangely enough, this is the first film I've watched that was directed by Roman Polanski, which is a mistake that will be corrected. From the beginning to the end this film is a highly gripping one and I'm sure the credit for that goes just as much to Roman Polanski's direction as it does the script and the actors performances.
The Premise:
"The Pianist" is the true story Wladyslaw Szpilman, a Polish man of Jewish faith who, with his family and millions of others, was swept up in the Nazi occupation of Poland and their quest to exterminate the Jewish people. Szpilman, being an exceptional pianist finds himself spared from the horrible train ride to a death camp but must bare the memory of watching his entire family take that ride as he continues to do what he must to survive to make it to the end of the war...
It is exceedingly difficult not to find yourself shedding a tear for the events that go on throughout this true tale of survival during the holocaust, which brings that much more poignancy to the film and its story. I highly recommend this film to any and all! {ssintrepid}
Special Features:
-A Story of Survival: Insight into the making of the film and its authenticity
-Roman Polanski's own story of survival during WWII
-Behind the scenes interviews with Oscar winners Roman Polanski, Adrien Brody and Ronald Harwood
-Clips of Wladyslaw Szpilman playing the piano
Movie Review: Survival, Yes, But of What?
Summary: 5 Stars
When Adrien Brody received the Academy Award for best actor in a leading role earlier this year, I was at first surprised. (I had expected Daniel Day-Lewis to be elected because of his incandescent portrayal of William "Bill the Butcher" Cutting in Gangs of New York.) Then I began to think again about The Pianist and realized that Brody's character -- Wladyslaw Szpilman -- was the focal point of that film from beginning to end...and that most of his portrayal was non-verbal. (Some may assert that the Warsaw Ghetto, not Szpilman, is the main character. They have a point.) Directed by Roman Polanski who also won an Academy Award -- as best director -- and deservedly so, this film examines a five-year period during World War Two when Warsaw was invaded and occupied by German and then Allied forces. For me, the defining moment in this film occurs when a bomb exploding in the studio drives Szpilman from the piano and ends the broadcast of his performance. His obsession with creating art seems to exclude from his consciousness any deep concern about his family (parents, two sisters, and a brother) or about the brutalities amidst German occupation, especially in response to Jewish resistance. I have not read Szpilman's memoirs, first published as Death of a City (1946) and then as The Pianist (1998). All I know about him is based entirely on Brody's portrayal in the film. This detachment from the world around him is evident again later, as when Szpilman, in hiding, silently moves his fingers across a piano keyboard, lost in the creation of music only he can hear in that situation but which the film's soundtrack effectively provides.
Polanksi's film obviously celebrates human survival during one of history's worst periods. I realize that comparisons and contrasts of Szpilman with other characters in other films is probably a fool's errand. However, at the conclusion of the The Pianist, I thought about Sol Nazerman (played by Rod Steiger) in The Pawnbroker (1964) who, at that film's conclusion, unleashes a silent scream of unspeakable pain. For whatever reasons, there is no such indication that what Szpilman has observed (if not experienced) has similarly affected him. The war ends. Life continues. Szpilman's career resumes. Perhaps, just perhaps Szpilman's own emotions can only be expressed through the creation of great art. It remains for others to express theirs in other ways, perhaps with a silent scream.
Movie Review: Survival by serendipity
Summary: 5 Stars
THE PIANIST is based on an autobiography by the Polish classical pianist Wladyslaw Szpilman.Within minutes of the opening scene as Szpilman (Adrien Brody) is playing live over Warsaw radio, German bombs fall on the city. It's 1939, and the city's Jews, of whom the musician is one, are about to enter a long, dark night. In the first third of the film, Wladyslaw and his family - mother, father, and siblings - struggle to stay together and alive as the Nazi's anti-Semitic strictures become more rigorous. First, the mandated armbands with the Star of David. Then, the forced removal into the Warsaw Ghetto. Next, deportation unless one has a certificate of employment with a German business. And finally, deportation regardless in a railroad cattle car bound for Treblinka - trains that always came back empty.
In the last two-thirds of the film, Szpilman somehow manages to survive in Warsaw alone after having been separated from the rest of his family. But THE PIANIST isn't the story of a hero. Rather, Brody portrays an ordinary individual much like most of us, who, in this case, more or less passively allows chance and circumstance, brutality or kindness, good luck or bad to determine his fate. And not since SCHINDLER'S LIST have we seen such casual brutality perpetuated by the oppressors. In one scene, an old man is tipped from his wheelchair off a third floor balcony. In another, after every third or fourth man is ordered out of a Jewish work detail and made to lie face-down on the street, an SS thug shoots each in the head. As the killer pulls the trigger on the last in line, his pistol's firing pin clicks on empty, and the poor devil on the ground must listen and wait as another bullet clip is loaded. But innocence and evil are not cleanly separated by lines of nationality. Not all of Szpilman's fellow Poles are good, and not all the Germans are bad.
The excellence of Brody's understated and poignant performance is what elevates this film into the five-star class. Or, perhaps, four and a half. It remains a notch below SCHINDLER'S LIST in the power of its emotional impact. There were so many more scenes in the latter during which one might have been compelled to turn away in tears. Nevertheless, THE PIANIST is arguably a contender for the Best Picture Oscar, and it's certainly far and away superior to that other recent film concerning genocide - the well intentioned but confused ARARAT.
Movie Review: Images of Progressive Dehumanization and Suffering...
Summary: 5 Stars
Neither a documentary nor a story of fictional characters set in a historical setting, The Pianist is the dramatization of the true survival story of Wladyslaw Szpilman, a Jewish pianist from Warsaw who died in 2000 and who can be seen and heard in the DVD Special Features. There are some things that come off more powerfully in this true drama format than in documentary testimonials, and particularly notable with The Pianist is the educative value of observing through time the stages of dehumanization against the Jews in Poland.
In the early part of the movie, an ominous feel develops as there is a move from "No Jews Allowed" signs to the requirement of wearing identifying Star of David armbands, to daily abuse on the street by "ordinary" people, the complicity of a Polish police force, the announcement that Jews would be expelled from neighborhoods, the confiscation of property, being forced into an overcrowded apartment and worse later, the walls of the ghetto going up, selection for forced labor, family survival by divvying up a tiny candy, gunshots to the head on whim, failed attempts of children to smuggle food...and yet still there was not utter despair, and still family members had each other...there were lineups where some were selected to step forward to be shot on the spot, bodies to be stepped over, starvation, and then Szpilman watching as his family was herded into railroad cars for deportation as he was pulled back and saved by a Jewish policeman.
From that point, Szpilman goes in and out of the ghetto to labor, and in so doing aids in smuggling in handguns for a planned Jewish resistance...but then he decides to escape the ghetto and not return. Adrian Brody is thoroughly convincing in his role as Szpilman, and the degree of suffering is increasingly apparent in Brody's face and gait. Continuing on with Szpilman's story we watch from Szpilman's hiding place as some Warsaw Jews resist, their molotav cocktails and guns no match for the tanks and flamethrowers. Szpilman escapes death on more than one occasion, and even the helpful non-Jews aren't so helpful. The burnt and gutted city panoramas, the bodies in pools of blood, the emaciation and disease, all these images...they hit, perhaps enduringly, in a place that a black and white photo montage with accompanying testimonials, valuable in its own way, just doesn't.