The story of "The
Pianist" begins in Warsaw in the year of 1939. It
focuses on a family of Polish Jews. The son is played
by Adrien Brody (sorry, his character's name is very hard to
spell), who is a famous pianist who plays his songs over the
radio.
Eventually, the whole family is sent away from Poland to get
executed. Brody's policeman friend saves his life by
shoving him away before boarding the train and telling
him to run. Well, he runs and runs, trying to find
shelter and food. Later on, he asks to be taken in by
a nice German couple. They allow him to stay, but once
a neighbor found out he was a Jew, he's forced to flee again
and struggle to find food and shelter.
The
film is a depressing epic that goes in depth about the
struggles the Jews went through during the Depression.
After you watch this film, you will realize that your life
could be a lot worse and you really have very little to
complain about. There's even a scene where the father
has to bargain to buy a piece of caramel and uses a knife to
split it in six to share with each member of his family.
In another scene, a man mugs a helpless woman for a bowl of
soup. The soup falls onto the ground and he actually
laps up the soup off the pavement. Still think your
life is horrible?
Adrien Brody gives a terrific performance that should at
least garner an Oscar nomination. So far, he's been in mostly
small and independent films, so he is yet to become a
household name. Hopefully, this is the film that puts
him on the map. The transformation he goes
through (or should say deterioration) is absolutely amazing.
By the end of the film, he's practically skin and bones, his face
and body all covered with filth. I did not feel
like I was watching an actor, I felt like I was watching an
actual Holocaust survivor.
It
might've slipped my mind, but I didn't know, before watching
the title cards at the end, that this movie is based on
a true story. That amazed me even more, knowing how
many times he came close to being hunted down. I
assumed if that were a real life character, the Germans
would've caught up to him and eventually and shot him to
death. But as my father said after watching this film,
"God was really on his side."
Roman
Polanski tried to revive his career with the mediocre
horror/mystery "The Ninth Gate," which received
poor reviews and had little box office success.
Hopefully, this movie will put him back on the map. I
can tell he put his heart and soul into the project, and I
found out later that this is actually a
semi-autobiographical story for Roman, since he himself is a
Polish Jew and had to flee the Nazis when he was very young.
My late grandparents were also Jewish, so this film gave me
some graphic insight into what it was like for them during
the Depression.
If
you're looking for a popcorn flick or the
feel-good movie of the year, you might want to go see
something else. But if you're looking to be moved and
enlightened, then it's a great film to watch. It
definitely left a lasting impact on me. Just beware,
the movie is about 2 hours and 30 minutes, and starts to
drag towards the end. Nonetheless, it's still a great
film.
