The Pianist

Released 2002
Stars Adrien Brody, Thomas Kretschmann, Emilia Fox, Frank Finlay, Maureen Lipman
Directed by Roman Polanski

The title is an understatement, and so is the film. Roman Polanski's "The Pianist" tells the story of a Polish Jew, a classical musician, who survived the Holocaust through stoicism and good luck. This is not a thriller, and avoids any temptation to crank up suspense or sentiment; it is the pianist's witness to what he saw and what happened to him. That he survived was not a victory when all whom he loved died; Polanski, in talking about his own experiences, has said that the death of his mother in the gas chambers remains so hurtful that only his own death will bring closure. The film is based on the autobiography of Wladyslaw Szpilman.

Summary by Roger Ebert

I've seen so many Holocaust movies now that it's difficult to come to a new one with fresh eyes, because we all know the timeline and the final outcome. Each film tries to come at it from a fresh perspective, usually a survivor's personal story, but all stories told from the Jewish perspective are essentially the same. The Nazis assumed power or invaded, they stripped Jews of their rights, they rounded them up and put them to work or death, and they systematically exterminated them. This film does two things within this framework, and it does them very well. It drives home the brutality of the Germans, and it shows the randomness of who survived.

The thing that never ceases to astound me is how brutal the Germans were. They were civilized Europeans, so how was it possible for them to collectively turn into sadistic monsters who thought nothing of beating a child to death or shooting a person for no reason? I'll never understand this for as long as I live. I know they had Hitler's propaganda machine whipping them into a frenzy with racial hatred, but that just doesn't explain it. There was a mob factor that helped reinforce these behaviors, but I think the real reason they behaved so sadistically was because they could. How far back in European history would you have to go to find a time when one group of people could murder people in another group without a reason or repercussions? This was an example of absolute power corrupting absolutely.

The film is relentless in showing the German brutality, but it ends with a German officer, Wilm Hosenfeld, saving Szpilman's life. It's the movie's first hint that the Germans weren't all inhuman monsters. We may forget this, but there were good people who served as Nazi soldiers, and Hosenfeld was one of them. I poked around on the web and found he helped many people throughout the war. Szpilman was the most famous but certainly not the only one. Unfortunately, Hosenfeld was found guilty of war crimes and sentenced to death by the Soviets. Testimonials from the people he helped save changed the sentence to 25 years of hard labor, but he died in the prison camp anyway. There were more Hosenfelds in the German army, but there weren't nearly enough. I'd like to know how the other German soldiers lived with themselves after the war.

Aside from the brutality, this movie shows the luck involved with survival. Every time a Jew was near a German soldier his/her life was at risk. It seemed so random how individuals were selected to die or were killed spontaneously, but it wasn't really that random if you look at the bigger picture. The end goal was to kill every single Jew, so these acts were random at the individual level but not at the collective level.

The most striking aspect of this film is how it shows Szpilman's transformation from a highly cultured person to essentially a caveman. In the beginning he had an esoteric skill, playing the piano, which later became useless as he was reduced to the basics of life: the search for food and water, shelter, and hiding from danger. The fact that he survived was a miraculous combination of zillions of small events. He followed the Jewish blueprint to survival, which was to simply wait it out and hope you're one of the survivors. It worked for him, but it didn't work for six million others. --Bill Alward, August 18, 2003