The Pianist

The age-old question redone in Holocaust blacks and crimsons: Art -- what is it good for? Can it save the world, effect change in the emotional tumors of man's soul, or is it just something pleasing to the eye that can be hung on a wall, or something to listen to on a balmy summer Sunday? Ultimately, the argument is moot, or should be: Art, real art, simply is. Like oxygen, it's not as important to comprehend as it is to simply be -- which is a roundabout way of saying that Roman Polanski's newest, which concerns the flame-blackened fate of a Jewish concert pianist in 1939 Warsaw, is chockablock with deep strains of meaning and multiple levels of both emotional and artistic resonance. As a film that comments for 149 minutes on the unspeakable atrocities of the Nazi era and how one lonely pianist's creativity served as both buffer and buffet during a time when, for most, there was precious little of either, it's an artwork that revolves around the nature of art. No one can ever accuse Polanski of making dull movies (the dreary The Ninth Gate excepted, of course), but The Pianist is the fugitive director's most personal and most harrowing film since he reimagined noir as the death cries of generation love some 28 years ago in Chinatown. Adrien Brody (the best thing about Spike Lee's otherwise scattershot Summer of Sam) plays Wladyslaw Szpilman, a Polish pianist who spends his days performing Chopin on Polish National Radio and tinkling the ivories in the local bistro when not embodying the urbane and intellectual Jewry of pre-destruction Warsaw. He's immaculate in all things, and Brody, with his long, manicured fingers that move like decisive spiders and his thin, angular face with that too-prominent nose, is the very picture of refinement. When the Nazis invade and begin their systematic process of ethnic cleansing, Szpilman is separated from his mother and father, brother and sisters, all of whom are eventually sent to the camps. He remains alone in the city to serve in the ranks of slave labor for the Reich. While the first half of The Pianist chronicles the somewhat familiar ground of the Nazi machine and its impact on the Warsaw populace, the second half, which tags along with Szpilman as he embarks on a guided tour of Nazi hell, is a gruelingly personal vision of the artist vs. reality. Polanski famously survived the Nazi occupation of Poland as a young boy, and The Pianist is infused with the sort of unflinching verisimilitude that rarely arrives without first-hand knowledge. Szpilman is shunted from one allegedly safe house to the next with the help of the Polish underground, while all around him is decay. Diseased, half-frozen, and witness (along with the audience) to the steady stream of horror (be warned: The Pianist has more dead children in it than most George Romero epics, and is far more distressing), Szpilman takes to performing sonatas in thin air, eyes closed, those jittery fingers stroking nothing but air. It's a wonderful moment in a wonderful, ghastly film, and one of the most moving arguments for the redemptive powers of art ever made.