Day 85: The Pianist (2002)

Movie #52 – The Pianist (2002) - 150 min, cert 15.

Hot on the heels of Lawrence of Arabia, we have another biopic. This one is based on the life of Polish concert pianist Wladyslaw Szpilman, or more specifically, his account of how he survived the Holocaust. We pick up his story in 1939 just before the outbreak of World War II. He is playing the piano for a Polish radio station, and enjoying all the trappings that go along with being a successful artiste. He and his family are clearly financially comfortable and well-respected within the community. Then the war comes and their lives change very quickly. They are evicted from their beautiful house and forced to live in extremely cramped conditions in the ghetto with the rest of the Jews. He is separated from the rest of his family when they are all ordered on to one of the trains destined for the death camps, but he is pulled out of the line by a friendly Jewish policeman and told to stay and work in the labour gangs. He escapes the ghetto and hides in a nearby apartment with the help of the Polish underground. He is discovered and has to flee. He survives by the kindness of sympathisers and blind luck, hiding out in bombed out buildings and foraging for food wherever he can find it, until the Russians arrive to liberate the city.

This is an excellent movie about the Holocaust. Perhaps not quite as good as the definitive Schindler’s List, but very good nonetheless. It approaches the subject from a slightly different standpoint. Most films that tackle the topic start in the Ghetto, then move on to the deathcamps. The central character here never goes to the deathcamps. All his family do, and he never sees them again, but he stays in Warsaw. At first in the work gangs, then running and hiding and eking out an existence in the rubble as best he can.

The only thing that let the movie down for me was the copy that I had, which was a shame. Although the film is mostly in English, there are a few scenes, and some of them key ones, in German, and my copy had no subtitles. So for the scenes in German I had to try and guess what was being said which was not always easy. There is one scene in particular, where Szpilman is discovered hiding in a bombed out house by a German officer. They have a conversation in which (presumably) Szpilman tells him he was a professional pianist and the German challenges him to play something on a handy piano. One day I would like to watch that scene again with the proper subtitles.

There isn’t much actual piano playing in the movie. Not altogether surprising, of course, there isn’t much time to play while running and hiding from the Germans. The pieces that are there though are exquisite and well worth waiting for. The piece he plays for the German officer, Chopin’s Ballade No 1 in G Minor, is mesmerizing. And this is the first of the films so far that I’ve sat and watched through all of the end credits just to listen to the music.

Score – 9/10. Brilliantly acted by Adrien Brody who thoroughly deserved his Oscar.

Next up is Double Indemnity, about which I know nothing.