Roman Polański grew up in Poland during his childhood years as tensions rose between Germany and the Jews. His father was a Jew, and his mother was a half-Jewish Russian. Shortly after moving the family to Kraków, Poland, World War II began with the invasion of their country, forcing the family into the Kraków Ghetto along with thousands of others. Polański witnessed the ghettos firsthand as well as the mass deportations from the ghettos into the German death camps. He watched as his father was taken away, believing they would never see each other again. His mother was taken to Auschwitz and killed in the gas chambers. It was only through luck and the help of some Polish Roman Catholics that he was able to keep hidden and survive Hitler’s purging orders. His memories of his mother, specifically her dress and makeup style, were later used as a physical model for Faye Dunaway’s character in his film Chinatown.
His firsthand experiences in Poland would come into play when he signed on to direct what could be considered his most personal film, The Pianist, a film that would follow one man’s journey through the Ghetto round-up and how he survived for years when so many others didn’t. It covers some of the same ground as Steven Spielberg’s Schindler’s List but puts more of an emphasis on how most Jews that survived through this didn’t do so because they were brave or strong or crafty but because of sheer luck. Indeed, we will see that the lead character, Władysław Szpilman (Adrien Brody), is ill-prepared for the occupation and all that came afterwards. By the grace of a handful of people who risked their own lives, he was able to survive through to the end of the war.
The film opens in September 1939. Władysław Szpilman, a Polish-Jewish pianist, is playing live on the radio in Warsaw when the station is damaged by an explosion during the Nazi invasion of Poland. Szpilman escapes the attack and rejoins his family at home, where they learn that Britain and France have declared war on Germany. But the expected relief doesn’t come, and Warsaw becomes part of the Nazi-controlled General Government. Jews are prevented from working or owning businesses and have to identify themselves with an armband displaying the Star of David.
By the following November, the Jews are gathered up and forcibly relocated into the isolated and overcrowded Warsaw Ghetto, where conditions are so bad that everyone is starving and crammed into spaces meant for 1/10 of the population. Food is scarce, and there is the constant threat of SS brutality. Szpilman is offered a position amongst the Jewish Ghetto Police but refuses, instead choosing to play the piano in a café. When his family fails to acquire a German work certificate, they are rounded up to be transported by train to the death camps. A friend of Szpilman’s pulls him from the line, saving his life but leaving him alone, the sole remaining member of his family. Eventually, he will manage to escape the Ghetto and go into hiding with the assistance of a non-Jewish friend living in Warsaw who, along with her husband, provides him with an apartment to hide in. As the war rages on, it becomes apparent that he cannot stay there, though, and he has to flee again, finally finding shelter in the bombed out remains of the city.
This film is based on the autobiography of Władysław Szpilman. This novel was published in 1946 and thus contains little of what happened to Szpilman during his years after the occupation. It does focus on many of the aspects of the realities of Ghetto life during the years he remained locked behind the wall, detailing the atrocities experienced by the Polish Jews. Like other holocaust autobiographies from the time, what is contained in these pages is horrific and will make you question the humanity of the Nazi soldiers who participated in these atrocities. There are moments in the film that are hard to watch, but it is nothing compared to what was written in the book.
Like most people from my generation, I was taught about the ghettos and death camps in school. What we weren’t taught was why, as tensions rose and invasion seemed imminent, more people didn’t flee the country, especially the wealthy who could afford to do so. The Pianist gives us a reason for this, at least for the Szpilman family. It’s a reason that was also echoed in the film Cabaret when citizens felt the rise of the Nazi movement was relegated to a small group of thugs, easily dispatched should they become more than a nuisance. Add to that a complete disbelief that things would escalate as much as it did and that the well-off would be reduced to the same level as the poorest of the poor, and you get an idea of why so many stayed in the face of so much danger. The film opens with an attack on the city, but the news of Britain and France declaring war on Germany convinces so many people that this would be over quickly and that life would soon resume normalcy. Of course, that is not what happened.
Most of the time, Szpilman does little to protect himself from extermination. He is not actively trying to avoid being narrowed out as someone of little use to the ghetto. His skills amount to being able to play the piano, and when tasked with doing anything like manual labor, he struggles, at one point so badly that he ends up being beaten unconscious. The one time he is actively doing something to better his position is during the preamble leading to the Warsaw Uprising, where he participates in smuggling weapons over the wall and into the rebels’ hands. Even then, he misses out on the actual uprising, watching it from a window on the other side after he manages to escape the ghetto with a lot of help from a friend.
Any film about the Holocaust brings with it a built-in sympathy. These are not the kind of films that can be viewed callously and emotionlessly. Polański could have easily played it safe by playing up our sympathies and enunciating the emotional stakes. He doesn’t do that. Instead, he lets the focus lie on just how much happenstance led to Szpilman surviving through to the end of the war. Polański himself spent quite a bit of time on the run, hiding out from the Nazis, often running away from the soldiers as they fired their pistols at him. This emotional pain and firsthand experience has been baked into the final chapter of The Pianist. Szpilman eventually finds himself hiding out in the wreckage of a home destroyed by the war. At one point, he is discovered by a German soldier, Wilm Hosenfeld (Thomas Kretschmann), who, moved by Szpilman’s piano playing, doesn’t expose him to the rest of the German army. The film doesn’t go into this detail, but Wilm actually hid several Jewish people throughout the city, protecting them by bringing them food and clothing whenever he could. He was disenfranchised with the Nazis and did what he could without exposing himself to execution. He was captured by the Russians when they invaded Warsaw and died in Soviet captivity.
The Pianist is a powerful film that needs to be seen. Any film that does a good job tackling the subject of the holocaust should be mandatory viewing in the hopes that it will help the new generations avoid the kind of hatred and fear that springs up groups like the Nazis. We are seeing similar fears and hatred again, this time directed at immigrants, and it is harrowing to watch when comparing it to the mindset of the German people leading up to World War II. It’s not exactly the same thing, but it is close enough to be scary. This is a film that challenges the notion that those who survived the Holocaust did so through their own abilities for self-preservation, but Roman Polański, having gone through it himself, is here to say that wasn’t the way it really was. His film shows us that more often than not, there was nothing that could have been done in that situation to improve your chances for survival, not in the end, anyway.
Academy Award Nominations:
Best Picture: Robert Benmussa, Roman Polański, and Alain Sarde
Best Director: Roman Polański (won)
Best Actor: Adrien Brody (won)
Best Adapted Screenplay: Ronald Harwood (won)
Best Cinematography: Pawel Edelman
Best Costume Design: Anna B. Shepard
Best Film Editing: Hervé de Luze
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Release Date: September 6, 2002
Running Time: 143 Minutes
Rated R
Starring: Adrien Brody, Thomas Kretschmann, Frank Finlay,
Maureen Lipman, Emilia Fox, Ed Stoppard, Julia Rayner,
and Jessica Kate Meyer
Directed By: Roman Polański
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