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THE
PIANIST
The
Pianist is a notable addition to the body of Holocaust films. It
continues to tell the story of what was perhaps the darkest time
in the history of the world. We need to continue to see and hear
that story, even when we want to turn away.
Review by Darrel Manson
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THE PIANIST
(2003)
This page was created on January 14, 2003
This page was last updated on
April 9, 2003
Review -click here
Trailers, Photos -click here
About this Film -click here
Spiritual Connections -click here
Forum -click
here
Dial up modems will take a few moments
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CREDITS
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 Directed
by Roman Polanski
Screenplay
by Ronald Harwood
Book by Wladyslaw Szpilman
Adrien Brody .... Wladyslaw Szpilman
Thomas Kretschmann .... Captain Wilm Hosenfeld
Frank Finlay .... The Father
Maureen Lipman .... The Mother
Emilia Fox .... Dorota
Ed Stoppard .... Henryk
Julia Rayner .... Regina
Jessica Kate Meyer .... Halina
Ruth Platt .... Janina
Michal Zebrowski .... Jurek
Richard Ridings .... Mr. Lipa
Nomi Sharron .... Woman with the Feather
Anthony Milner .... Man Waiting to Cross
Lucy Skeaping .... Street Musician
Ben Harlan .... Street Musician
Produced
by
Robert Benmussa .... producer
Timothy Burrill .... executive producer
Gene Gutowski .... co-producer
Henning Molfenter .... executive producer
Roman Polanski .... producer
Lew Rywin .... executive producer
Alain Sarde .... producer
Rainer Schaper .... associate producer
Original Music by Wojciech Kilar
Non-Original Music by Frédéric Chopin (from his piano
works)
Cinematography by Pawel Edelman
Film Editing by Hervé de Luze
Casting by Celestia Fox and Heta Mantscheff
Production Design by Allan Starski
Art Direction by Sebastian T. Krawinkel
Set Decoration by Gabriele Wolff
Costume Design by Anna B. Sheppard
MPAA:
Rated R for violence and brief strong language.
Runtime: 148 min
For rating reasons, go to FILMRATINGS.COM,
and MPAA.ORG.
Parents, please refer to PARENTALGUIDE.ORG
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TRAILERS
AND CLIPS
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CD
SOUNDTRACK
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The
Pianist
(Music from the Motion Picture)
Roman Polanski's telling of famed Polish composer-pianist Wladyslaw
Szpilman's survival in the Nazi-controlled Warsaw ghetto can't help
but be infused with the director's deepest passions: he himself escaped
the Kraków ghetto as a boy of 7. The musician's status as a
musical hero to the oppressed Polish Jews of World War II was surpassed
only by that of Chopin, the composer who was at the core of Szpilman's
repertoire. Thus this score revolves tightly around Chopin's music,
with modern Polish pianist Janusz Olejniczak paying passionate homage
to both his musical and national forebears, the haunting strains of
the Nocturne in C-sharp Minor setting the film's historical and dramatic
tone. The underscore of previous Polanski collaborator Wojciech Kilar
(The Ninth Gate, Death and the Maiden) is represented here by the
soulful "Moving to the Ghetto," a cue that helps anchor
the soundtrack's troubling time and place with understated grace.
The collection concludes with a rare, remastered performance of Chopin's
Mazurka Op. 17, No.4 by Szpilman himself, recorded in Warsaw in 1948.
--Jerry McCulley
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POSTER
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The
Pianist
27 in x 40 in
Double-sided poster , plain or
Framed | Mounted |
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SYNOPSIS
Music
was his passion. Survival was his masterpiece.
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 Roman
Polanski's THE PIANIST is based on the memoirs of the talented pianist
Wladyslaw Szpilman (Adrian Brody), a Polish Jew, who miraculously
survived World War II. The first half of the film transports viewers
to 1939 Poland, and brings it to life clearly and believably. Szpilman
is a tall, handsome, winsome man who is revered for his piano performances
on public radio. He lives with his family--an intelligent, loving,
and spirited bunch--in an upscale flat in central Warsaw. Bombings
have begun to torment the citizens of Warsaw, and step by step,
the Nazis infiltrate, the Jews are branded and set apart from their
neighbors, imprisoned in a ghetto, and slowly exterminated. The
story is told through Szpilman's eyes, and thus carries as much
confusion and fear as disgust and torment. 
Polanski
paints Warsaw in bleak shades of gray and black, expressing the
helplessness of the Jewish people and the cruelty of the Nazis with
captivating photography. In the second half of the film, which takes
place in the early 1940s, Szpilman is alone, having managed to avoid
the trains to the death camps. His struggle to survive, with some
help from non-Jews but mostly his own will to thrive, takes place
in long, silent, languid stretches filled with the imagined piano
music that inspires Szpilman to live. In a climactic scene of immense
beauty and spine-tingling tension, Szpilman must actually perform
for a German soldier who is inexplicably patrolling the near-deserted
and utterly dilapidated Warsaw ghetto. THE PIANIST, in the subtlety
of its sublime and heartbreaking tale, is carried by the intensely
moving performance of Brody, whose transformation is truly unforgettable.
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REVIEW
by
DARREL MANSON
Pastor,
Artesia Christian Church, Artesia, CA
http://netministries.org/see/churches/ch01198
Darrel
has an incredible love and interest in the cinematic arts. His reviews
usually include independent and significantly important film.
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 Is
The Pianist just another Holocaust film?
Well, it is a well done film set in the Warsaw ghetto, directed by
a survivor of ghetto life, Roman Polanski. It is blessed with an outstanding
performance by Adrien Brody playing Wladyslaw Szpilman.
But perhaps we ought not to not speak of ?just another Holocaust film.?
The Holocaust was one of the key events of the Twentieth Century.
Certainly it was the most horrific. The more we can understand about
the Holocaust, the more likely we can find ways to work through the
evil that it represents and seek ways to say, ?Never again.? Each
Holocaust film brings us a different view and understanding of what
that event represents.
 Usually
when I think of Holocaust films as a genre, I think of a mixture of
sorrow and depression at the brutality and inhumanity and arbitrariness
depicted in such a film. That is abundant in The Pianist. Usually
the Holocaust films have an aspect about the nobility of some in the
midst of such brutality. There is some of that in The Pianist, too.
We also can expect a Holocaust film to tell of miraculous or near
miraculous survival. That is the center of The Pianist.
The Pianist offers some things though that distinguish it from some
of the other well-known films set in the Holocaust. Often those films
are a story about rescue -- Otto Schindler or the people who tried
to hide the Frank family. The Pianist is about survival. There are
times that people help Szpilman at various points and without that
help he too would likely have perished. But this is not so much the
story of his rescue as it is of his being alone in a hostile and deadly
world.
 That
aloneness is another part that makes this film a different voice telling
of this time. Usually we see the importance of community for the survival
of these times. It could be working together and encouraging each
other in camps or just the importance of family as in Life is Beautiful.
The Pianist shows some of the dark side of the community in the ghetto.
There was competition for resources. There was corruption among the
Jewish police. There is even conflict among families. In the end,
all the community was destroyed, leaving Szpilman without that resource
of support.
There are many scenes of Szpilman walking alone through the destruction
of the war. Walking through the assembly areas still littered with
suitcases of those put on the trains. Walking down a street of burned
out buildings. Walking through the empty corridors of a hospital.
He is living in a world that once teemed with life, but now is devoid
of anything to even sustain life.
That sense of being alone is, I think, the key element this film adds
to our understanding of the Holocaust. Szpilman survived because of
the help of some, because of his perseverance, because of luck. But
in essence, he survived alone.
 Another
thing that struck me in this film was the role of random luck in his
survival. Often the Germans would pick out a certain number of Jews
to be shot for no particular reason (other than being a Jew). Had
Szpilman stayed a bit longer in the ghetto, he'd have likely died
in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. He is taken out of the line for the
trains while the rest of his family goes off to Treblinka.
Szpilman is not portrayed as noble or especially deserving of survival,
merely as one who managed to survive against very long odds. That
survival is worthy of celebration, not because of who Szpilman was,
but because each survival represents a life worthy of celebration
in itself.
 The
Pianist is a notable addition to the body of Holocaust films. It continues
to tell the story of what was perhaps the darkest time in the history
of the world. We need to continue to see and hear that story, even
when we want to turn away. It is easy from a distance of sixty years
to think of it as something that happened long ago and was an anomaly
-- that it would or could never happen again. Or we look at it as
something so strange that it cannot have really happened. But we continue
to witness new examples of genocide. We continue to live in a world
that is filled with brutality and inhumanity.
The Pianist and other films of the Holocaust remind us not only of
what was, but also of what still can be. It also reminds us of the
gift that each life is. |
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PHOTOS
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About this Film -click here
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