October 2, 2002

The Pianist
(Focus) Rated R
Release date: December 27th, 2002

Roman Polanski’s first great work in over 20 years, The Pianist examines a terrible time in world history with a personal eye, remarkably subtle and complex given that the film is centered on the horrors of the Warsaw ghetto.  Polanski’s touch is so deft that he guides his central character by many of the events of the time, but never rubs your face in the ugliness.  It just happens, as in real life.

The Grey Zone takes a rather different tack, focusing specifically on the dichotomy of jews, in the concentration camps, who chose to ease the way of other jews to their deaths as a way of preserving their own lives.   This issue is in The Pianist too, but it is only part of the story.  Likewise, Istvan Szabo’s Taking Sides, which will be showing at the Mill Valley Film Festival (where I am headed next week), deals with the question of personal responsibility for atrocities by people who looked the other way rather than taking specific negative action.  (The film still has not U.S. distribution.)  Again, the issue is in The Pianist, but that is not what the movie is about.

The movie is about… well, it is about so many things.  It is about death, but it is about survival.  It is about mindless brutality, but it is also about kindness.  It is about expression, but it is also about unbearable restraint. 

The Pianist snuck up on me.  I mean, I knew everything that was coming.  I know the history.  I know the moments that have been put on film.  Yet, in scene after scene, The Pianist took me to places familiar and unexpected.  I kept on waiting for a “movie” to start… for Polanski and screenwriter Ronald Harwood to reach for a familiar convention… even a familiar convention that is a twist.  (Coincidentally, and much to my surprise, Harwood also wrote Taking Sides.) 

I had an anticipatory conversation about the film with a friend the other day and he was going on about Adrian Brody’s limitations, never mind that he is considered one of the most respected young actors among young directors these days.  But I thought about it as I watched Brody’s performance and, like the film, Brody never fell back on normal techniques either.  The performance is so subtle that it’s hard to imagine Brody getting much awards attention.  But he is spectacularly real in this role, even if I never believed he was playing any of the spectacular piano solos.

The Pianist grew on me, scene after scene after scene, right though the closing credits that saw the exit of only two of the 80 some-odd people in the screening I attended.  And after looking at the imdb’s list of 191 titles that have “holocaust” as a keyword, I think it’s safe to say that The Pianist is the best drama about the Jewish Holocaust that I have ever seen.  And there have been some great films.  The only documentary that I think I would put ahead of The Pianist is Shoah, still the most remarkable document of that period in history that has been created. 

The weird part for me is that how settled I feel about the feel … relaxed, in an odd way.  I think it may be even better than I now feel it is… or maybe it’s just that I will be able to intellectualize the experience more after seeing it again.  All I know right now is that it snuck up on me and found a place in my soul by being unrelentingly humane and viciously true and… beyond words.