The Pianist (2002)
Directed by Roman Polanski
The true story of pianist Władysław Szpilman's experiences in Warsaw during the Nazi occupation. When the Jews of the city find themselves forced into a ghetto, Szpilman finds work playing in a café; and when his family is deported in 1942, he stays behind, works for a while as a laborer, and eventually goes into hiding in the ruins of the war-torn city.
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19 films that influenced The Pianist
What critics say influenced The Pianist
Spielberg, of course, might be the worst major filmmaker in the world at understanding what makes his own movies work, and I must strenuously disagree with the idea that Schindler's List is the greatest film about the Holocaust (Shoah is certainly better, and so is Night and Fog ), or even the greatest non-documentary (right off the top of my head, The Pianist is clearly more serious about its topic).
The film, in its own way, is as compelling an account of the Holocaust as "Schindler's List."
The holocaust was the worst crime against humanity and a race ever committed; the concept as to the extermination of the Jewish race and it’s allies is simply ridiculous and thus a thought is shown in “The Pianist” a film that rivals every one of the greatest Holocaust films ever made, including the best “Schindler’s List”.
There's never much in Brody's performance to suggest what's going through his mind, so the higher lessons of his story come through only vaguely, and with none of the insight or inspiration of a "Schindler's List."
"The Pianist" will constantly be compared to "Schindler's List," but where that film accentuated its horrors, this one instills them more deeply by presenting their everydayness.
The treatment of history in The Pianist is different from, say, Schindler’s List in a way that I mentioned at the beginning.
At this point Adrien Brody’s singular performance, combined with his physical transformation, may inspire references to Tom Hanks’s one-man show in Cast Away; but here the performance is at the service of the story rather than the other way around, and Brody’s restrained and unshowy performance holds the screen without calling attention to itself.
Knowing this makes Brody's transformation from debonair musician to something resembling Tom Hanks in the latter half of Cast Away all the more remarkable.
That's a good thing as well since Brody is rarely off camera and often times has no one else to play off (much like Tom Hanks in "Cast Away").
German émigré Douglas Sirk presciently refuted this idea in his American debut film Hitler's Madman (1943), which told of Himmler's razing of the citizens and town of Lidice after the murder of a top official.
In 1976, Lina Wertmüller made a movie called Seven Beauties that presented (with vulgar bravura) a concentration-camp survivor as the ultimate moral sellout, but that's not what Polanski is up to here.
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As a parable of art-triumphing-over-Nazism, it's not as strong as the Arthur Miller-scripted 1980 TV movie "Playing for Time," and as a Warsaw ghetto survival story, it can't touch the 1997 Danish drama, "The Island on Bird Street."
It could be argued that certain portions of "The Pianist" have an overly familiar ring to them, and certainly some of the scenes depicting the cruelty of the Nazis are reminiscent of similar moments in "Schindler's List," "Holocaust" and even "Sophie's Choice."
One way is to present the overwhelming evidence as Raul Hilberg does in "The Destruction of the European Jews" and Claude Lanzmann does in his documentary "Shoah."
The Pianist has already, jokingly, been referred to as ‘The Diary of Anne Frank meets CastAway’ and that’s not too far from the truth.
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It's a world Polanski knows all too well, a world that characterizes many of his best movies, from his paranoid '60s classics "Repulsion" and "Rosemary's Baby" to the shadowy duplicities of 1974's "Chinatown."
The Pianist recalls movies like Repulsion and Rosemary's Baby, particularly when the protagonist is alone for long stretches of time.
It is a convergence of his experiences as a child in occupied Poland, made sport of by Nazi soldiers while separated from his parents spirited away to a concentration camp--in addition to his best films: the meticulously structured constructions of Rosemary's Baby, Repulsion, and The Tenant with the perversity and institutional corruption of Chinatown.
This is a man who tormented poor unstable Catherine Deneuve in Repulsion by leaving her alone in the house with her nightmares.
When Szpilman hides in different flats for years on end, it recalls Catherine Deneuve's physical and psychological isolation in Repulsion.
In the media coverage between Polanski's Cannes and Oscar victories for The Pianist, much was made of the parallels between Wladyslaw Szpilman's story and Polanski's own early struggles to stay alive.
The classical camera style (no director does shot/reverse-shot as elegantly as Polanski) reminds one of the fatalistic visuals of Chinatown and Rosemary's Baby.
The Pianist recalls movies like Repulsion and Rosemary's Baby, particularly when the protagonist is alone for long stretches of time.
If Roman Polanski were not the same man who directed "Chinatown" and "Rosemary's Baby," he might never have been equipped enough to tell a story as difficult and poignant as that of "The Pianist."
It is a convergence of his experiences as a child in occupied Poland, made sport of by Nazi soldiers while separated from his parents spirited away to a concentration camp--in addition to his best films: the meticulously structured constructions of Rosemary's Baby, Repulsion, and The Tenant with the perversity and institutional corruption of Chinatown.
This is a man who positioned his camera slightly sideways so that the audience would crane their necks to try and see around the corner in Rosemary's Baby.
In a rare move for a man who consecutively spun off the macabre Cul-de-sac, The Fearless Vampire Killers and Rosemary's Baby, Polanski depends almost totally on story.