The Pianist

Reviewed by Colin Stewart

The pianist’s journey is a miraculous survival from the horrors of Nazi Poland. The Pianist details various levels of confusion, and as senseless cruelty grows prosaic every natural feeling is warped. There are no histrionics: sentiment is shown to disappear. When Szpilman’s life is saved, he utters only a spare ‘thank you’.

Formally The Pianist is a great film. The structure, the detail and the acting are excellent, but the content allows for no indulgence. Instead you are riveted, through a mesmerising two hours plus. Sat comfortably in a cinema, however, I was left with a feeling that we have all seen this violence too often. I am being ‘moved’ and ‘entertained’ – and this seems questionable. We put aside our relative, petty privations when engaging in the film – change levels, and understand – but the holocaust has still become a story, and we are so divorced from understanding such miserable extremes. We might feel disdain at the sadism, or gasp at the sheer physical devastation of Poland, but there is something implicitly voyeuristic in the horror we feel.

We watch Szpilman’s comfortable, civilised life torn apart – his devastation; the loss of his loved ones. What can we know of this? New ‘understanding’ should go deeper than portrayal. What needs addressing is how such people are formed, and what institutions allow for such people to wield such power. The Pianist ultimately shirks this question which could give the film a real point. Instead there is dangerous, stereotypical vilification. The Nazis, again, are of the usual two types – boorish goon, and sadist. They speak a language we don’t understand – subtitled German (where the Polish Jews use English) – and thus are separated not just by their acts but also by race.

The Pianist’s characters often lack names, and are thus dehumanised. Szpilman’s playing of the piano ultimately raises him to ‘human’ again, when a Nazi asks him his name. But that same German himself is lost – without a name – later in a Soviet camp. Understanding, and humanism, goes both ways – even in the most terrible circumstances. The music – silenced, but never absent in the fingers of Szpilman – offers the height of human expression, cross-cultural empathy. Fingers can pull triggers or play piano; technology feed a nation or produce bombs.