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The first time I watched this movie was when I was very young, too young to understand it. And also I haven’t seen the whole movie then. But still, even at that young age, it made a big impact on me. So recently I decided to watch it again and this time the whole movie. And it had me stuck to the screen, I didn’t want even to blink just in case I miss something. It’s amazing, the journey of the character is great and the story is something that makes you think about life. And I just want to share this masterpiece with you and the scenes that for me they were one of the greatest pieces of cinema I have seen.
So where do I start…
The Pianist is a biographical drama from 2002, directed and produced by Roman Polanski, with a script from Ronald Harwood, based on the true story and autobiographical book by Wladyslaw Szpilman (1946). The story is a Holocaust memoir about how he survived it, starring the brilliant Adrien Brody. Before I start sharing my thoughts about this true masterpiece I want to share the whole story with you in case you haven’t seen the movie. Because believe me, this story will give you chills like no other.
The story starts in 1939 with Wladyslaw Szpilman, a Polish-Jewish pianist, playing live on the radio in Warsaw, when it being bombed during Nazi Germany’s invasion of Poland. He soon rejoins with his family hoping that soon it will be over and they will the victorious when they learn that Britain and France have declared war on Germany. But things don’t always turn the way we want them to. Soon Warsaw becomes part of the Nazi-controlled Government, and Jews are prevented from working and made to wear blue Star of David armbands as a mark. By November next year, Wladyslaw and his family are forced to leave their home and to move to the Warsaw Ghetto, which is locked by a wall and guarded by German soldiers. Conditions there are getting worst with the minute, people starve, children are being abandoned, dead bodies are left everywhere. They even witnessed the SS killing a whole family across the street from them. No one helped, no one could help, they were all scared for their own lives.
On the 16th of August 1942, Wladyslaw and his family are about to be transported to the Treblinka extermination camp, when a friend from the Jewish Ghetto Police recognizes him and separates him from his family, saving his life. His family was transported and killed in the gas chambers and he never sees them again. Soon he becomes a slave laborer and learns about the upcoming Jewish resistance. Eventually, he manages to escape and goes into hiding with the help of a non-Jewish friend and his wife. He watches from the window of his hiding place how the Warsaw uprising unfolds and soon fails. He hears screaming, sees more death. Soon he is being discovered by the neighbors which want to report him and is forced to run yet again and to find his second hiding place. There soon he starts to suffer from jaundice. After getting better in August 1944, the Home Army attacks a building across the street from his hiding place, with a tank hitting his place as well, forcing him to run again. In the following months, Warsaw is destroyed. He walks the ruins, until eventually coming across a house, where he finds a can of pickles. While trying to open it, a Wehrmacht officer William Hosenfield finds him. Learning he is a pianist he asks Szpilman to play on the piano in the house. He gets lost in Chopin’s Ballade in G manor, despite his tired body and soul. The officer lets him hide in the attic of the house, supplying him with food regularly. Later in January 1945, the Germans are retreating from the Red Army. Hosenfeld meets Szpilman for the last time, promising him he will hear him on the radio after the war. Giving him his coat to keep him warm during the harsh winter he leaves him. In Spring later that year, Hosenfeld alongside other German soldiers is captured by former inmates of the Nazi concentration camp. Hosenfeld overhears about a former inmate being a violinist and revealing that he knows Szpilman asking him if he knows him too, after confirming asking to tell him that he is being held in the camp. Later the violinist tells him and together with Szpilman, they go back just to find out that the camp has been abandoned.
The movie ends with Wladyslaw being back in Polish Radio, performing Chopin’s “Grande Polonaise Brillante” to a large prestigious audience. In the epilogue is stated that he died in 2000 at the age of 88 years, knowing about Hosenfeld only that he died in 1952, still in Soviet captivity.
Now if only ready about this story didn’t make you keep your breath until the last word I don’t know what will. This story is so powerful that makes me rethink life’s philosophy and what the will to live can make us go through. Wladyslaw was literally been through hell over and over during his years in Warsaw over the Holocaust years.
There are certain scenes I want to focus on some cinematic points from this story. I already highlighted them in the story which makes it easier for you to get back chronologically and check it better.
The first scene I want to show better is the SS killing the family across the street from the Szpilmans house. I want to mention that this scene is memorable because it’s so terrible, It the first scene where it introduced the terror over the Holocaust and the Jewish oppression. Also, I want to put a warning here because this scene is beyond horror, and it’s not for the faintest hearts.
One of the first nights in the Ghetto, the SS officers visit the Jewish families and they are across the street from Szpilmans home. They hear some noise and go slowly to the window to check what is happening. They see through their window inside the house that the family was having dinner when the officers invade the home. They ask the family to stand up, but there is a man in a wheelchair and he cannot. They take him, lift him and throw him outside over the balcony along with the wheelchair. The rest of the family are taken downstairs outside and being killed one by one in shooting, and then run over with their trucks, making sure even if someone survived they won’t anymore. The Szpilman family watches in horror not being able to make a noise or help because they would be killed brutally as them. No one dares to help. In this scene, Polanski introduces first the horror that was happening, and it was so terrifying that it took away my breath by watching it only.
The second scene I choose is when the family is being lined up to be transported to the Treblinka extermination camp. He is being taken away from his family and saved, watching his parents sister and brother being taken away to their death. He never sees them again. And then is following a scene when he walks the empty streets of Warsaw after the extermination crying. He just walks and lets his cries echo on the streets. This scene broke my heart in a way I didn’t know it could. I cannot imagine the pain he went through knowing what happened to his whole family. Adrien Brody makes an excellent job portraying this moment making it real as you can feel the agony the character had felt.
The next scene is when Wladyslaw is living in the abandoned and destroyed ghetto, he finds a can of pickles, the only food he comes across. He took it with him everywhere he went in case he winds something to open it. Before I continue with the rest of the scene, even just this is memorable because Polanski is showing how this is the character’s last hope and possession, making the spectator think about what he really needs in life and compared to how little it was needed before to make life better. Continuing with this scene he finds a house where he fins something tying to open the can of pickles but while trying the officer finds him. You can see the horror on his safe, how still he is, while they can of pickles is leaking and rolling to the officer’s legs. The officer learning he is a pianist and asks him to play the piano in the house. While he sits and with his last strength, he plays as it will be the last song in his life, as his life depends on it, seeing so many emotions crossing his face and in the end you see acceptance. The officers sit and listen quietly to Wladyslaw.
After he finishes he helps him to his hiding place in the attic instead of killing him. Even this small hand of kindness that was given from the “enemy” is the greatest point for me in the whole story. He spears his life and not only, but he also helps him. He brings him food regularly. When I saw him giving him the loaf of bread the jam, seeing the happiness in Wladyslaws eyes and joy of eating this made me cry. It made me realize that life is about simple things, we don’t need everything we think to be happy. Thinking that he doesn’t have anything else anymore and that maybe his life will end the little things give him so much hope. I felt the pain he did through his whole journey at this moment. And then when he was forced to leave and the officer gave him his coat to keep him warm, warmed my heart as well. Even until the end, he tried to help him with everything he had and could. This is when we should understand that even the simples act of kindness, maybe for us will be meaningless, but it can mean the whole world to someone else. That we should help each other no matter what. Because of this officer, he got to live his long life, and Wladyslaw never forgot it. When someone does a great impact on our life he lives on forever.
I know that there are more scenes that need to be mentioned, that are as powerful as those I listed.. Movies like this cannot be separated in only “good” scenes, because the whole length is breathtaking. But if you haven’t watched this movie I hope you do, I hope I made you want to do it, because I think this is a total game changer and makes you think about your own life in a way you haven’t before. After all this is what the greatest drama movies are meant to do.
Used sources:
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0253474/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Pianist_(2002_film)
https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/the-pianist-2003