Part of the problem is that Szpilman, as played by Adrien Brody, isn’t a hero or a villain. He’s a survivor. Eluding capture by the Germans because of the courage of friends and strangers and several near-miraculous escapes, he witnesses the trauma of Warsaw under occupation, from the debasement and deportations of Jews (including his entire family), to the Warsaw ghetto uprising of 1943 and the general Warsaw uprising of 1944. While others perform incredible acts of heroism or resort to collaboration, extortion and denunciations, Szpilman hides, watching from behind the windows of empty apartments. He remains focused on his goal of living through the hell he sees all around him, rarely betraying more complex emotions. Frustrated by his “enigmatic” presence, the film reviewer of the leading Polish daily Gazeta Wyborcza protested that the viewer “wants to know more, feel more.”
Maybe so, but what makes “The Pianist” a truly impressive film is that it presents its central figure as what he is, resisting the temptation to glamorize him. In that sense, Szpilman probably is a more representative figure than the heroes of other films about World War II and the Holocaust. And “The Pianist” is equally meticulous in not glamorizing or demonizing any group, including Polish Jews and Catholics–even Germans, although there’s never any doubt who is responsible for the orgy of death and destruction that takes place on a daily basis.
The film also leaves no doubt that all generalizations are unfair. In his memoir, Szpilman doesn’t avoid uncomfortable subjects like the role of the Jewish police in the ghetto, who were ordered by the Germans to round up Jews for deportation to the death camps. “They were no less dangerous and pitiless than the Germans themselves,” he wrote. “Tears, pleas, even the desperate screams of children left them unmoved.” Polanski doesn’t tiptoe around such scenes either. Szpilman survived because a Jewish policeman, a collaborator, yanked him out of the line for the train that would have taken him to his death, because Polish friends and contacts risked their lives to hide him and, at the end, because of a German officer who helped Szpilman survive until the fighting stopped. Throughout this ordeal, the destruction of Warsaw’s Jewish community is presented in the broader context of the occupiers’ systematic destruction of the Polish capital and its myriad resisters.
Yes, it’s a history lesson. And Polish critics may think that Poles, in particular, don’t need it. After all, they’ve had a long line of stunning films about the war and the Holocaust–from Andrzej Munk’s “The Passenger” in 1960 to Andrzej Wajda’s “Korczak” in 1990. But other viewers certainly could use this kind of education. Even the best Hollywood productions like Steven Spielberg’s “Schindler’s List” have usually treated the Holocaust as an event largely divorced from the broader impact of the German occupation on the rest of Polish society. And there have been very few attempts to get beyond the black-and-white portrayals of murderers and victims.
The cumulative impact of all the horrors Szpilman observes–granted, in his somewhat detached fashion–belies the notion that the film packs no emotional punch. If “The Pianist” were simply a history lesson, audiences wouldn’t sit silently glued to their chairs as the long list of credits roll. But they do–including in Polish theaters.
While it may be true that those Poles who grew up on war stories and films won’t learn anything new from this film, a new generation can and already is benefiting from it. Erring on the side of historical accuracy is hardly a bad thing. There are far more high-school students, or viewers who know little more than the average high-school student, than Polish critics are willing to acknowledge. Even in Poland.
