The Pianist - B

On DVD (Released 2002). Rated R, 149 minutes.

At some point, movies about a historical event become hard to watch because of redundancy. There is no better example than the Holocaust. No modern historical event has the drama and simple 'good and evil' characters, and nothing compares to the gravity of the death of millions of people based only on their race (Notwithstanding the activities in Africa over the past century). I think it might be time to blow the whistle on Holocaust movies. Schindler's List was such a towering achievement and handled the subject with such depth and unflinching accuracy that any Holocaust movie watched now is unavoidably compared against it.

The Pianist is a good movie, and if it was the first Holocaust movie I had ever seen, I would have been floored by it. This movie is more like a historic "Survivor", as it traces the true-story survival of acclaimed Polish Pianist Wladyslaw Szpilman (Adrien Brody - won Best Actor for this role) from the eve of war to the end of the war. Director Roman Polanski introduces us to the cocksure and dapper Szpilman as bombs are exploding outside his studio. The next 2 hours are booo-rrrring, not because the movie is bad, but just because we have been there and done that (first a move to the ghetto, then ghetto survival, then avoiding the trips to the concentration camps), and there is no meaningful character progression that occurs.

Until the last 30 minutes, there was nothing remarkable happening and this one was destined for the "C" bin. But, as Szpilman escapes captivity and goes into hiding in 1944 Warsaw and ultimately digresses into a homeless man subsisting in the desolate and bombed out ghetto, it turns into a decent story and film. Polanski uses Szpilman's appearance to demonstrate the depths of his struggle. At first he is well groomed and immaculately dressed all the time, but as the movie progresses he gets gradually worse until he ends up literally looking and acting homeless. The best part of the story is Szpilman's interactions with a compassionate Nazi commander that allows him to live and ultimately (via food) saves his life.

Brody (whom I love to hate) does an admirable job, especially in those last scenes. He is able to capture the dehumanizing effect of hunting for food and living like an animal. The remainder of the cast is fine, and the best part of the boring 2 hours is their attempts to rationalize each situation as being okay, until they are ultimately led to their death.

My advice? Watch the first 30 minutes and the last. You'll get everything you need.