Reviewed by Meisha Rosenberg

The Pianist, directed by Roman Polanski and starring Adrian Brody,
is a two-and-a-half hour movie that is not easy to sit through. However, that is as it should be for a film about the Holocaust that is based on the true story of Wladyslaw Szpilman--a highly regarded Jewish composer and pianist--who survived and eventually escaped the horrors of the Warsaw Ghetto.

Many note the difficulty of creating art out of an event as devastating as the Holocaust. Aharon Appelfeld, a survivor, said, "Artistically, it is impossible to deal with it directly. It's like the sun. You cannot look at the sun; the temperature is too high." Film is a riskier medium than, say, literature, because it idolizes the image of human 'perfection'--a hallmark of Nazi ideology.

Polanski, who himself survived the Krakow Ghetto, gets close to that temperature of suffering in The Pianist mainly by getting out of the way and letting a hauntingly gutted Warsaw and its people speak through the camera. The movie was filmed on sets and in Germany and Warsaw, which itself becomes a character. The extras do a stunning job showing, through little moments, the tragedy of an entire people. At one point, a man about to be shot gets an extra few seconds of life as the German reloads his gun--in a Hollywood version, someone would in these few seconds save the man, but here evil and its henchman, randomness, hold sway.

Particularly striking is the way Polanski uses sunlight, for example, at the train station, where Spzilman's family is selected for deportation. Recurring images of light and heat create a dizzying sense of predation: there is nowhere to hide.

Except hide Szpilman does. After working various jobs, he escapes the ghetto, then moves from secret apartment to apartment outside the walls. From these apartments he watches the ghetto's inhabitants stage the Uprising (which he aided in the Underground). Szpilman becomes the universally witnessing eye of the Holocaust: he and his family watch the brutal murder of their neighbors; he sees Germans shooting Jews in the street right below his hiding place, and the camera follows the smoke as their bodies burn.

Brody's method acting pays off, as his starvation and feverish condition are palpable. Szpilman's quiet humanity comes through in the gestures he makes trying to aid others and his humble acceptance of help. However, this is no "Schindler's List," no "Life Is Beautiful," with its ridiculously hopeful ending. Germans in this movie are unapologetically ruthless, torturing Jews, whom they make dance and sing even while they are in pain. As the Russians approach, however, a German officer, (Wilm Hosenfeld, played by Thomas Kretschmann) finds a starved Szpilman hiding in the attic next to German headquarters. In one of the most moving scenes, Szpilman, after a long-enforced silence, plays the piano for the officer. (The score, dominated by Chopin, Beethoven, and Brahms, adds to the existentially mournful tone.) Art--in this case music--restores
humanity, and Hosenfeld provides Szpilman with enough food to survive
the next weeks.

Polanski is to be commended for his historic meticulousness--scenes that come to mind include a discussion among Szpilman's family about why the American Jews weren't doing more; a buildup, in the Underground, to the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, which has been given short shrift in the public eye; and the woman who smothers her baby rather than relinquish it to the Nazis. There are also moments of dark humor, particularly when the war is almost over. It seems ironic that a film so critical of human brutality was created by someone who committed a crime. Did Polanski, who raped a 13-year-old girl, deserve to win the Oscar for this film? This reviewer's response is unequivocally yes. Not because art should be considered outside its real-life context, but because the context in this case is long past and accounted for. Samantha Geimer, the girl who was raped (now a grown woman and mother), in the LA Times, decried the media's continual harping on what happened. Yes, she says, Polanski did an unforgivable thing, but he has paid more than what was mutually agreed upon--the judge did not honor the plea bargain, and Polanski has been in exile ever since. Are we to continue Geimer's pain by continually punishing the crime? To do so values women's chastity over their very lives, as though rape were a crime worse than murder.

All human suffering, wherever it is to be found, should be decried, and preventing recognition for this movie would only continue the cultural isolationism and chauvinism that propagates the myth of the worth, above all, of a woman's sexual purity--a myth that contributes to crimes against women.

It is ever more important that the history of the Holocaust be accurately represented by artists who have lived it, as they will not be around forever. The Oscar judges did the right thing in honoring a talented director--who in The Pianist makes a stunning tribute to those who suffered.