THE PIANIST

Review by Anton Black--This movie is powerful. It portrays the horrors of occupation and genocide in the Warsaw ghetto during World War II. It is based on the autobiography of Wladislaw Szpilman (Adrien Brody), a Polish Jewish composer and pianist whose live performance of Chopin was the last music heard over Warsaw radio before the station was bombed by the Germans during the invasion in 1939. He spent the war hiding out in Warsaw. The movie portrays his view from his hideout window of the two wartime uprisings in the city and their suppression by the German forces. The devastation of Warsaw at the end of the war is graphically portrayed.

This movie portrays various aspects of the relationship between surviving occupation and resisting it. In the movie, Szpilman was physically supported by the resistance in hiding, but was not given an active role. He in effect languished in hiding and almost starved to death due to a problem within the resistance. The real life context for this included several major contradictions. There was anti-semitism in the Polish nationalist resistance which resulted for example in minimal support for the ghetto uprising from outside the wall. There was also a contradiction between nationalist and communist resistance forces, and the lack of cooperation between the second Warsaw uprising and the advancing Red Army.

This movie has something to say to occupation troops. Before the Germans retreated, an officer, Captain Wim Hosenfeld (Thomas Kretschmann) protects Szpilman basically out of respect for his music (he makes Szpilman play). He gives him a warm coat (which later almost gets him shot). In return the Captain seeks (as a POW) for Szpilman to put in a good word for him to the Red Army, but this doesn't work out for him. The lesson here I think is that if you are an imperialist soldier, do the right thing before you face total defeat.