THE PIANIST (2002)
Director:Roman Polanski
Roman Polanski’s THE PIANIST is a powerful film, but being about the Warsaw Ghetto and the Holocaust, it’s almost hard not to be. However, if there were a generic Holocaust film, this would be it. Despite not taking place in a concentration camp, it practically feels like Polanski’s going down a checklist of familiar elements – a long parade of Nazi atrocities, Jewish suffering, some Jewish and Polish resistance and retaliation, and a touch of German compassion (that betokens hope of course). Polanski’s direction is completely competent and the movie lacks any ambiguity of what is going on, but it all feels too straightforward. Every scene is there to hit only one clear note, and there’s no complexity beyond that. One also wonders why this film is following this particular protagonist and not someone else. Adrienne Brody is terrific as he can be in embodying Wladislaw Szpilman, but Szpilman is so passive that he’s barely there as a character. Worse yet, we get to know no one else to any real degree either. Intimate moments as when the Szpilman family shares a piece of caramel and when Szpilman pretends to play a piano concerto are too rare. All of the family members are distinctly promising but they disappear after the first third. Emily Fox stands out as a beautiful blond cellist, but she also has limited screen time. The film picks up some in the last 30 minutes as Szpilman starts to develop a relationship with someone finally, but by then it’s too little, too late. While we get epilogue information on Szpilman and a German officer, Szpilman’s family’s fate is strangely left unmentioned at the end (they all died in Treblinka).
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regards
Nikunj
