White Plains CitizeNetReporter - THE CINEMAFANATIC: See <i>The Pianist.</i> Remember it Forever. Searing.

WPCNR's WHITE PLAINS VARIETY. Presents THE CINEMAFANATIC, Rob Barabee. From The Yonkers Tribune. January 12, 2003: The Pianist is one of the year’s best movies. It is a haunting, horrifying portrayal of a Holocaust survivor, and it pulls no punches.

Adrien Brody stars in the film as Wladyslaw Szpilman, a piano player, a Polish citizen, and a Jew. Szpilman’s journey through Nazi-occupied Warsaw is shocking, appalling, and magnificently brought to life on the big screen by Brody, screenwriter Ronald Harwood, and director Roman Polanski (who is himself a Holocaust survivor).

After all that has already been made about the Holocaust, creating another film about it is a supremely difficult and daring task, but these three men are more than up for the challenge.

Szpilman’s survival is based, above all else, on luck, and the film wants to make this clear. The Holocaust, Polanski and Company dutifully report, was not survival of the fittest. Strong, brilliant, beautiful people were executed along with everybody else.

They were shot in the head for asking a question or beaten to death for helping a pregnant woman. They were stabbed, blown up, gassed, burned, and starved, for no reason at all.

Wladyslaw Szpilman is intelligent, well-liked, and well-known. He is shrewd, resourceful, and possessing of a remarkable will to stay alive. While these traits often aid in his survival, only luck ultimately spares him. The Holocaust was too terrible for superheroes, and Szpilman, although awe-inspiring in so many ways, is no exception to this rule.

People with a cursory knowledge of the Holocaust often ask, “Why didn’t anyone fight back?” This is an important question to the filmmakers (as much so as the notion of luck), and they address it carefully.

Some of the film’s characters angrily ask each other why they are not putting up a fight; why they are sitting back and letting themselves be slaughtered. Others do indeed fight, actually proving the initial question false, but these fighters, in their fighting, also provide reasons why so many remained passive, even up to the moment of their deaths.

Fighting, we see in the film, was basically futile. The only thing it did was turn near-certain death into absolutely certain death.

But hold on, you may say, what about honor, bravery, and all that? Those asking this will not be disappointed, because the movie addresses these points too.

It tells of Jews traitorously volunteering to aid the Gestapo as “Ghetto Police,” but then, once in power, helping to save a few lives. It tells of brave, loving men mounting their escapes while leaving their families behind to die. It tells of these things and many others, and in so doing, it forces viewers to reevaluate their ideas of honor, of bravery, of heroes.

Because of this, and all the rest of it, The Pianist proves to be quite an education not only in our past century’s most unimaginable horror, but also in the basic human value systems around which we base our lives.

Many say that Holocaust-themed art must be created, so that none of us will ever forget. The Pianist, I can tell you, is a film that I’ll remember for as long as I live.

The Pianist, directed by Roman Polanski. Written by Ronald Harwood. Based on the book by Wladyslaw Szpilman. Starring Adrien Brody, Emilia Fox, Thomas Kretschmann, Frank Finlay, and Maureen Lipman. Running time: 148 minutes. Rated R (for violence and brief strong language).


Create an account		The White Plains Daily Internet Newspaper...Founded 2000 A.D....


			Designed and hosted by WestchesterInternet.com