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The Pianist

Hymn of the holocaust
THE PIANIST
Cert. 15
Director: Roman Polanski

The subject of the Nazi atrocities against the Jews during WWII is always both heart-rending and sobering. In this film we are taken back to the Jewish sufferings in the Warsaw ghetto. The Polish-born director, Roman Polanski, himself survived the Krakow ghetto as a child, only to learn that his mother had died in a concentration camp.

The Pianist tells the true story of the Jewish musician Wladyslaw Szpilman, who often broadcast on Polish radio before the war. He was one of only 20 Jews left alive in Warsaw when the Nazis withdrew in 1945. He is played by Adrien Brody who has recently received an Oscar for best actor for his performance.

As with Schindler's List the film does not spare us the horrific brutality of all that occurred. Szpilman's family are taken off to the gas chambers, but he is saved by a friend. The brutal suppression of both the Jewish uprising in the ghetto and later the Polish uprising in Warsaw, takes place around him, but he survives.

Why does he survive? Is it a mere anomaly, an accident? I did not get that feeling. Rather the story becomes a beautiful parable with the pianist at the centre. We live in a world where music is both present and possible, and not even the most terrible tragedies or flagrant evils can destroy this fact. Music is something that can never die. As such it indicates the eternal.

The biblical contradiction at the heart of what it is to be human is here on full display. We have the nobility and depravity of man and of that of which we are capable. We have here too the possibility of touching eternity. How good it is to see a film grappling with such profound truths. As I sat and watched I felt that if the spirit of Francis Schaeffer had been sitting in the seat next to me. He would have said: 'Now this is real cinema.'

JEB
John Benton