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The most burning question after seeing The Pianist is,
how the heck did it win the Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay
– especially against stuff like The Hours and Adaptation?
Nothing really happens in the two and half hours of The Pianist.
Nor are any themes or ideas really developed. But, on the other
hand, The Pianist is by no means a bad film.
It’s basically the true story of Wladyslaw Szpilman (Adrien
Brody), a Polish Jew, who hides from the Nazi’s. The first
hour shows the Szpilman family as things get progressively worse
for the Jews. They move from restrictions, to the ghetto, and
eventually to the trains that will bring them to concentration
camps. This is where Wladyslaw is separated from his family and
hides with the help of non-Jewish friends who have places they
can keep him. We continue to see Szpilman suffer illness and hunger
as he continues to keep hidden until the Russian’s invade
and capture the Germans.
The fact that Szpilman is a pianist has little significance except
for a suggestion that it is by pretending to play the piano that
helps him cope with the near-prison like circumstances for many
years. It also provides some moments for piano playing, which
mark some of the more sublime moments of the film. In fact, on
a visual level, the whole movie is beautifully filmed. And Brody’s
performance is just as good. His internal, as well as physical,
suffering becomes evident as the time passes.
The best way to describe The Pianist is as the Thin
Red Line of the Holocaust. Not much happens, but that’s
not exactly the point. You see the Holocaust from Szpilman’s
point of view in what could almost be considered a narrative documentary.
You feel his horror at the indiscriminate killing of Jews, his
fear as he draws near to being caught, and his hunger as he scrounges
for something to eat. Thus, The Pianist becomes more
of a phenomenological film that lets us experience a man’s
struggle for life in one of the most horrific of times.
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