The Movie THE PIANIST was released to be shown as a few selected Theatres. The Film is base on a Biography that was published in 1946.
Roman Polanski was the Director. The Focus Features Studio released the Film in December 2002. It takes an hour and 3/4 to watch it. Due to the violence it is rated ''R''.
SOME OF THE STARS:
Andrien Brody plays Wladyslaw Szilman, (the Pianists)
Frank Finlay plays the Father
Maurenn Lipman plays the Mother
Ed Stoppard plays Henryk Szilman, (the older Brother)
Julia Rayner plays Regina Szilman, (a Sister)
Jessica Kate Meyer plays Halina Szilman, (a Sister)
THE PLOT:
This Movie begins on September 1, 1939, in Warsaw. We see a black and white newsreel scenes of the peaceful and daily life in this Polish Capital City.
As the newsreel we see Wladyslaw Szpilman playing Chopin's Nocturne in C sharp minor at the Warsaw studios of Polish Radio as the Luftwaffe begins to bomb the City. First, the windows, then the control booth are blown out, and the technicians flee, but Szpilman continues in a disciplined fashion his musical interlude until he is literally blown off his stool. Covered with dust he walks downstairs he meets Dorota, (Emilia Fox), a classy blonde Polish cellist he has a crush on. Before she hurries off to join the Actor she lives with, she promises to meet him later.
Szpilman is in his late 20's and is a shy and quite diffident type of Man.
His life is filled with his music. He only stops playing the piano when he goes to work at a Polish Radio Station. He has been working there for four years.
It may seem strange to you that Radio Stations hired Pianists to play Classical Music, (live), but if you think about all the Big Band Music Radio Shows it is not strange at all!
This Radio Station had hired a Symphony Orchestra as well.
His only other Human connection is with his very cultured Jewish Family.
Szpilman's Family has gathered around their Radio, (on September 3rd), to listen to news from the BBC, (from Great Britain). The news was about Britain and France joining Poland in the War against the Nazis.
It was interesting to watch the relationships between the Family. Wladyslaw is angry with his Brother, (who is an Accountant), Henryk. He thinks that Wladslaw work is not worth much.
Their Father is an optimist, (he is making calculations and predictions about the Family's situation), and the War.
His Wife is much quieter and not confident that the British, French and Polish can drive the Nazi's back.
They have two Daughters, (one is an Attorney), are polite and always agree with their Parents and Brothers.
They entertain modestly singular Acquaintances who may become more important later in the Film.
Although the Szpilmans are Jewish they represent middle class successful People who have become integrated within the Artistic and Professional Polish Community.
Up to this time they suffered very little from the terrible anti-Semitism and atrocities that are happening.
All that changed, on October 1 when the Germans marched into the City!
Szpilman is eventually able to play his piano only for Polish war profiteers in a segregated club, must wear a yellow armband, and cannot meet Dorota anywhere but the street, for Jews are forbidden to enter gentile establishments, attend public gatherings, or even walk in the park. As he has seen the Wehrmacht enter Warsaw at a distance, while his family attempts to hide their savings and sell their possessions, so he sees the two ghettoes open for what will eventually contain upwards of 500, 000 Jews.
We have referred a couple of times in these pages to the cinematic dictum that ''comedy is a long shot; tragedy is a close-up.'' Nothing in THE PIANIST is milked for tragical close-up sentimentality, nor certainly, are the horrific events of the German persecution shown as comedy, but the dictum is, in a technical sense, Director Polanski's method.
We watch what is happening through Szpilman's eyes and awareness. You will see the preceding and later events in medium and long shot.
His Father is knocked down in the street for not bowing to a Nazi and forced to walk in the gutter.
Some German Guards insist some elderly Jews waiting in line into dancing for them.
A Woman wearing a fur Boa will ask,(appears often), and keeps and asking Szilman, ''Have seen her Husband?''
Szpilman, (as long as he can continue to play the Piano), does not see what is happening around him.
On Novemeber 1940 a wall is built around the Ghetto. This is to ''protect'' the non-Jews from the ''pollution'' of being near a Jew. The Szpilman Family is not ''asked'' to move to the Ghetto.
Wladyslaw Szpilman still watches all of this at a distance. The Family look across the Street and see an Einsatzguppen, (Nazi), (Nazi), murdering their neighbours. The Grandfather is pushed out of his wheel chair from a third storey window. The Szpilmans wonder why them and how did they miss us?
Of course it does eventually happen to them. On February 1941 they are taken ,(along with over 70,000 other Jews), to the main Warsaw Ghetto.
The woman in the fur is still looking for her husband. A little girl, (Roman Polanski's Daughter, Morgan), has been separated from her Family and is found holding an empty birdcage.
In July 1942 Szpilman's Family are told to go to the Umschlagplatz, (the Train Station), where they are put on a Boxcar on a Train that is going to the Concentration Camp called Treblinka. Others were select to travel to other Death camps. There were 300, 000 Jews that were taken from the Warsaw Ghetto.
Wladyslaw Szpilman is saved by a friend of the Family, (who has become part of the Jewish Committee. The Committee has been forced by the Nazi's to select who will be sent to the Camps), because this Man admires the Pianist's talent.
Szpilman is like so many other Jews, (including Roman Polanski), escaped through a hole in the Wall and were hidden by Catholic Families in the Countryside. None of them will ever see their loved ones again.
Occasionally we see some of the horrors in close-up of Szpilman. A Man is so hungry that he tries to grab a bucket of hot soup from an old Woman. While he is grabbing it he knocks it and all of the liquid is spilled on the ground. The man goes down on his knees and begins sucking it all up. The Woman walks away weeping.
What we do see Wladyslaw Szpilman's sad handsome face, his haunted eyes, the tilting of his head as he is trying to hear the music in his mind.
He is helped by Socialists, Polish ''Guerilla Fighters'', Members of the Undergroundand finally a German officer.
In that time from windows and rooftops, through blinds and from lofts we see People slowly starving to death.
One by one his benefactors have been captured, killed or have fled.
He witnesses the revolt and destruction of the Warsaw Ghetto, (that happened between April 19th and May 16th, 1943), the uprising of Warsaw's Population in late September of 1944 and the liberation of Warsaw by the Army of the USSR, (in 1945).
Szpilman always dreamed in his exiled months of fear and hunger of playing the Piano.
THE OSCARS:
Nominated for the best Film of the Year.
Roman Polanski for the best Director.
MY THOUGHTS;
Adrien Brody turns in one of the great performances on film. He learned how it felt to feel like he was starving by being fed a diet of weak tea, boiled eggs and chicken.
There have been only a few Movies that have Historical and Biographical that have been told with so much restraint.
Through this Film he showed the good and the bad People who live during the Holocaust and World War II.
I highly recommend this Movie to you.
Comments are always welcome and ratings don't matter.
©LL2003
