Regus London Film Festival 2002

The Pianist
Roman Polanski

Toby Marshall

The Pianist offers a deliberately unsentimental, balanced and stylistically restrained interpretation of the autobiography of Wladyslaw Szpilman, a classically trained composer and pianist who through some bravery, but mostly good luck, managed to be one of only twenty Jews who avoided starvation, deportation or execution during the Nazi occupation of Warsaw.

It opens with the Luftwaffe bombing Poland's capital. The Germans are preparing to invade but Wladyslaw (Adrien Brody) has other things on his mind. He's broadcasting live on Polish radio and is so engrossed in his recital that it takes a direct hit for him to leave the studio. On his return home we meet the rest of his family, including his pragmatic father (Frank Finlay) and nervous mother (Maureen Lipman). For a moment the sense of foreboding lifts as the BBC announces that Britain has declared war on Germany. Yet we know that both the Poles, and the Polish Jews, are about live through a period of unrivalled brutality, the history of which is well known to all.

Polanski's depiction of the Szpilmans' experiences of the Warsaw Ghetto makes for challenging viewing. While we may have anticipated the arbitrary brutality of the Nazis, which is dramatised in minute and unflinching detail, the depiction of the Jewish community confounds our expectations. In a more predictable treatment of this grim historical episode, the inhabitants of the Ghetto would have been united though their common oppression, but not in The Pianist.

In particular, Polanski foregrounds the activities of those who worked for the Nazi appointed Judenrat (Jewish Council) and who took responsibility for implementing policies that would ultimately assist the Final Solution. Others are shown to profit from the escalating food prices, which rise dramatically due to Nazi restrictions on supply. Wladyslaw survives by getting a job as a pianist in a swanky Jewish restaurant, whose customers dine on fine food, and listen to his affective playing, whilst the bodies of the starved pile up in the streets.

In fact, the leftist resistance is the only group that comes out of the film with much dignity. One of its jovial leaders reminds Wladyslaw that even in the Ghetto he should 'always look on the bright side' and notes, with unintended irony, that his relative good fortune in comparison to others is an example of 'the historical imperative in action'. Polanski films all of this with stylistic reserve.

In one scene we watch from the other side of the street as the Nazis raid a Jewish tenement block. As they enter a darkened flat at the top, and the lights are turned on, we find a family that is sitting in the dark to avoid detection. The officer in charge orders them to stand to attention, but the eldest wheel chair bound member cannot oblige. To demonstrate his complete command of the situation, the officer orders that he be picked him up and thrown off the balcony. Significantly, Polanski shoots this scene in a long shot and avoids the more intimate framing that would have heightened our emotional engagement, but restricted our space for thought.

This detachment is mirrored in Polanski's choice of central protagonist. The effete and rather slight Wladyslaw wants to help the resistance, and he does his bit, but he's of no real use to them as fighter. Consequently, he, like us, plays the role of a spectator in the tragedy that unfolds around him. By the time of the final Jewish uprising Wladysaw has escaped the Ghetto and is forced to watch its bloody defeat from the window of the flat in which he's hiding, a dramatic device that Polanski repeats when the Polish resistance decides to make its stand. Polanski also offers a narrative that does not allow us to draw hasty conclusions with regards to the motivations, or morality, of many of the participants, even individual Nazis.

In the concluding section, Wladyslaw is found in hiding by a German officer (Thomas Krestchmann) who orders him to play a piano to prove his identity. On hearing his moving rendition, the officer decides to provide Wladyslaw with shelter and food, in spite of the fact that he is a Jew. And whilst Polanski never reveals the precise motivations for this act - could it be that the officer has comes to recognise Wladyslaw's humanity though his music? - the scene does serve to complicate our response, when it would have been far easier, and arguably more fashionable, to present all Nazis as inherently evil.

Unfortunately, Polanski’s work has been proved too sophisticated for some. The Pianist quite rightly earned him the Palm d'Or at the Cannes film festival, but it is also reported that he was booed by a number of critics who apparently objected to the lack emotion in the film. Perhaps Polanski, who himself lived through a similar experiences as a child in war-time Krakow and Warsaw, would have pleased his critics by encouraging us to emote a little more, and reflect a little less.

UK cinema release date: 24 January 2003

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