Polanski is the right director, not just because of his first-hand knowledge, but because he is unwilling to over-inflate Szpilman’s tale. Polanski’s style is descriptive, not manipulative or openly interpretative; his “Chinatown” from 1974 is a masterpiece of restrained, detached direction. The stupidity of the Nazi system and the tragedy of Szpilman’s life are plain enough in Ronald Harwood’s screenplay. So much is taken away from Szpilman; early in the film, we see him flirting with a pretty blonde. Years later, she is married, pregnant, and willing to hide him from the Germans, but some weeks after that we hear she has been “arrested,” and we never see her again. These interludes are treated calmly, to show how delicately life slips away, like a ribbon in the breeze. Giving “The Pianist” any more sense of a story arc than it already has, or pumping up scenes for suspense, would have only cheapened the movie.
In their semi-autobiographical novels about the war in the Pacific, both James Jones and Norman Mailer focus on the utter hopelessness that day-in, day-out life-and-death situations instill in their victims. At night, soldiers awake in tents find no answer to their questions about why some of their comrades were cut down in battle, and not others, and why some tents are hit by mortar shells in the middle of the night, and not others. When will it be mine turn, and what does it matter what I do between now and then? The result is to see no point in anyone’s life, to see no reason to do anything when it will only be taken away later for no purpose. Everything becomes purposeless and aimless, and the soldiers only go along with each other out of a herd-animal instinct to not separate and appear like a coward. This is the element that I always felt was missing in Spielberg’s otherwise brilliant “Saving Private Ryan,” and this is the aura that surrounds Szpilman throughout “The Pianist:” nothing means anything.
Yet “The Pianist” is strangely beautiful, even uplifting, if for no other reason than because Szpilman does survive. In the end we see him back in Warsaw, playing the music of his countryman Chopin, and we realize this may be Polanski’s story as well. He survived something horrible, with no answers, but it made him who he is today, and he is able to make beautiful things. Perhaps the message of “The Pianist” is like Brian Cox’s speech at the end of “The 25th Hour:” think of how close all this—your life—came to not happening. The final hand that helps Szpilman belong, amazingly, to a German officer, and when Szpilman thanks him, the officer tells him don’t thank me, thank God, I think He wants us to survive.
Audiences can sometimes be calloused, and with “Schindler’s List” and “Life is Beautiful,” the last decade has seen plenty of Holocaust movies. Yet the Holocaust will always be interesting—just like war, murder, infidelity, and vampires—because these are mettle-testing situations that stretch the limits of the human mind and spirit. Sadly there were not enough Oskar Schindlers in Germany when there needed to be, with the reckless cunning to save thousands, but “The Pianist” is honest about there being bad people human enough to still do one good act. Szpilman is pulled away from a train to a concentration camp by one of the turncoat Jews who joined the Nazi police. Walk away, he tells Szpilman, I just saved your life. This same turncoat has, of course, sent hundreds, if not thousands to die. But he did save one starfish.
Finished February 20th, 2003
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