The 50 Greatest Dramas: #43 - The Pianist (2002)

Roman Polanski returns to form with this true story-based account of Wladyslaw Szpilman, "the greatest pianist in Poland - maybe even the whole world", as he aims to evade capture by the Nazis in war-torn Warsaw

After the disaster that was The Ninth Gate (1999), Roman Polanski's career, already on the wane, looked to be heading for the exit door. Enter Wladyslaw Szpilman's autobiographical account of his time in the Warsaw Ghetto - the perfect means for Polanski to distill his own experience of his time in Krakow during World War II, a subject he had wanted to tackle for years.

As it is The Pianist is Polanski's greatest work since his heyday in the 1970s, a classically structured and shot movie that undoubtedly rivals Schindler's List as one of the most detailed and shocking examinations of the treatment of the Jews by the Nazis.

Spanning the length of World War II, the film begins in 1939. Szpilman (Adrien Brody) is performing classical pieces on the radio as bombs begin falling on Warsaw. As the months role on, Szpilman witnesses the restrictions the Nazis place on Polish Jews - from compartments on trams they are not allowed to travel in to the startling sight of walls being built around parts of Warsaw to enclose the Jews into what became the infamous ghetto. As his family (including his mother, played by Maureen Lipman, and his father, played by Frank Finlay) are rounded up to be shipped off to the labour camps, Szpilman manages a dramatic escape - only to find himself in hiding for the remainder of the war in various abandoned apartments across the city. In an already distinguished career that has seen him work with Ken Loach, Spike Lee and Barry Levinson, Adrien Brody gives his best performance to date. As the years tick by, and Szpilman moves from one bombed-out house to the next, so Brody becomes a shadow of his former self - losing over 30 pounds of weight to the point where he looks like a ghost. But this is not just a role that requires drastic physical change; dominating the screen from beginning to end, Brody is required to journey through just about every emotion an actor can elicit.

Surrounded by Allan Starski's awesome production design, Brody is also aided by the fact that Polanski's film resists the temptation to show mass extermination. Rather, The Pianist is very much concerned with showing the sly means by which the Nazis took control of Warsaw. From the moment we see a German beat an old man in the street for not prostrating himself in front of him, the film concentrates on a series of isolated moments that echo the terror Polish Jews were suffering. The result is a triumphant and elegantly paced affair, which builds momentum over the two-and-half hours to the point where Szpilman is finally found by a German captain (Thomas Kretschmann) and must play the piano, literally, for his life.

Verdict
Polanski's best film for well over two decades, The Pianist emerges as a moving depiction of one man's struggle for survival, carried off with a committed performance from star Adrien Brody.