Top Box Office Movies

The Pianist (2002) Focus Films
2 hrs. 28 mins.
Starring: Adrien Brody, Thomas Kretschmann, Maureen Lipman, Frank Finlay, Ed Stoppard
Directed by: Roman Polanski

The Pianist

Rating:

E-MAIL FRANK OCHIENG

Photo: Focus Films

Filmmaker Roman Polanski has miraculously arrived in riveting fashion by reaching his ultimate creative juices with the piercing, soulful and powerful Holocaust drama The Pianist. Polanski’s penetrable narrative is based on Wladyslaw Szpilman’s 1946 memoir “Death of a City”. Although familiar ground is covered in the horrific account of Nazi occupation, Polanski’s intrepid showcase still injects some ghastly and revealing elements into one the most horrid human-made atrocities to violate mankind. There will be inevitable comparisons to its highly touted cousin in the form of Steven Spielberg’s Oscar-winning, tragically probing masterpiece Schindler’s List. If anything, The Pianist is about the tenacity of the durable humanistic mind to overcome the frustrated odds and challenge the conventions of wickedness with the willpower and fortitude to rise above the destructive mayhem. Polanski has helmed an indomitable story of survival. What’s forced to the forefront are the courageousness, outrageousness and senseless violence that all resonates as a result of the fragile desperation invested in the mighty evil that man can do when there’s no value or celebration pertaining to the preciousness of life.

Polanski, a mere youngster during the volatile times when the turmoil was unfolding in the Krakow ghetto he was living in, knows about what it takes to be exposed to imminent danger and then gradually bounce back to recapture his passion. The chided moviemaker has seen his share of demons come and go over the years: the days of random womanizing, the sick-minded and unfortunate forced connection to the Charlie Manson murders that claimed the life of his pregnant actress wife Sharon Tate, the late seventies’ sex scandal that sent him dodging the law only to be ultimately exiled to France and of course his prominence as a formidable film director (Rosemary’s Baby, Chinatown, A Knife in the Water, Tess) that quickly declined when his expressionistic vision in filmmaking was offset by the real-life controversies that plagued him. So with The Pianist as his comeback project, it’s only natural for Polanski to identify with his heroic protagonist Wladyslaw Szpilman as both a complicated man battling his overwhelming woes as well as a tremendous artist waiting to burst out at the seams.

What is so compelling about Polanski’s approach is the way in which he weathers the storm concerning how he grasps the severely caustic manipulations behind the Holocaust. He realizes how obviously inherent the dire emotional forces are based on the encompassing hideous movement of the Nazis. Instead, Polanski skillfully concentrates on the personal intricacies of his perilous protagonists and uses the thriving madness of the Holocaust as an incidental background landscape that shapes their behavior and dictates their psychological agenda. In other words, Polanski is astute enough to not take on the Holocaust as the gigantic and scabrous entity that it was; he simply uses his weary players as resilient pawns and lets us witness how affecting this devastating insanity is through their disillusioned eyes.

It’s 1939 and Germany has just invaded Poland. While this hostile action is taking place, we find the extremely talented Szpilman (Adrien Brody in a shining, remarkable performance) eloquently performing Chopin’s Nocturne in D minor on the national public radio based in Warsaw. When the bombs start exploding in ominous fashion, this doesn’t phase Szpilman one bit—he is obligated to play his piano and deliver the sweet harmonic tunes over the radio airwaves in hopes of drowning out the chaos that persists outside of the station’s indelible walls. But when an errant explosion destroys the station, Szpilman is forced to high tail it back to his cozy, privileged home where he finds his family making some immediate plans to flee from the persistent and pesky Nazis.

And so the Germans march in defiantly as friction fills the deteriorating, fear-ridden streets. The unspeakable happens: Polish Jews are unmercifully rounded up like prized cattle as their lives are totally disrupted by the menacing captors. Feeling understandably degraded and defeated, the film methodically spotlights the disastrous, inevitable results. The Jews are ruthlessly stripped of their identities and possessions while being reduced to becoming faceless two-legged rats scraping along for survival in what would become known as the Warsaw ghetto. The segregation has begun and these people that existed in their progressive livelihoods are now clumped together in the solidarity of humiliation, misery and degradation. The protocol is such that these people had to wear armbands, be barred from the simple pleasures of dining and wining in various eating establishments, deprived of casual liberties such as innocently walking along a city sidewalk, etc. Soon the onslaught of starvation, disease and eventual death would prevail and the disillusionment of the denounced masses would come at the delighted expense of the nefarious Nazis.

For a while, Szpilman and his family manage to escape the rigors of deportation as they find employment that prolongs their stay for the moment. In particular, Wladislaw’s brother Henryk (Ed Stoddard) is truly memorable as the opinionated individual who has no choice but to hold back his tongue if he doesn’t want to invite anymore bad attention to himself or his family. But time has run out and Szpilman’s family is finally deported, leaving the rail-thin and sad-eyed musician to fend for himself and live in a perennial state of shock. The disconnectedness that he embodies for his departed loved ones is as penetrating as being an unwilling witness to the sickening happenings around him. Isolated and numb by all the misfortune, Szpilman is an involuntary observer of the cruel fate that hounds his fragile psyche. Whether hiding out underground, censoring his behavior, relying on the kindness of strangers or being exposed to the continued inhumane harassment of Nazi dominance, Szpilman’s humanity is constantly tested by the disbelief of this elaborate, nightmarish scenario.

The Pianist is an amalgamation of all that is precious and preferential to the delicacies of life: hope, faith, resiliency, resourcefulness, pain, inadequacy, self-reflection, determination, inspiration, integrity, cynicism and loss. Strangely enough, Polanski pieces together an unlikely exposition that celebrates the durability of one man’s treasured outlook that ultimately keeps his perspective and sanity in tact: the resistance to let go of his musical musings. Szpilman’s art is the one component that couldn’t break the deep-seeded spirit and optimism of an individual welcomed to go over the edge. The fingers that made an exceptionally beautiful sound on the piano keys were potent enough to block out the unpleasant sounds of panic and the shock factor of inexplicable human waste. Polanski recognizes that Szpilman’s heart was filled with sweetness and passion through the lyrical vibes of his instrument. The mere grasping of Chopin’s Grand Polonaise was certainly elegant and proper enough to have the self-assured Szpilman attack the physical and mental ugliness and filthy realities of the Holocaust.

Polanski marvelously spells out the uncertainties and chilling gamble that give The Pianist its unsettling and unsparing grittiness. Brody is absolutely moving as the droopy stone-faced pianist who takes us on a harrowing ride on his frail shoulders as we get a mundane front seat view to the real claustrophobic and pervasive alienation behind the rotting Warsaw ghetto walls. There’s not much we know about Wladislaw Szpilman in terms of a concrete character. If anything, he serves as our restless, heroic guide to the abusive mankind’s absent consciousness. But despite this observation, it’s not really essential to know the man as much as what the man experienced since his writings were instrumental and enabled us to peek through the bleak shades of his startling, gory adventures. We, along with Szpilman and the movie’s victims and other sympathizers, find ourselves questioning when the tension will let up? Where are the English and French to put a stop to the Germans’ maniacal control? How many people must die before human suffering can be considered a full-fledged, monumental tragedy? Why can’t compassion overtake the carelessness of repugnant servitude?

For The Pianist, the starkness is real in its inherent absorption. With iron clad performances that are hard to erase in your mind and a capable filmmaker on the rebound in the form of the maligned Roman Polanski, looking at a grotesque period in history was never so revealing, oddly poetic and heartwarming.

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Frank Ochieng
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