By CHRIS GLADDEN SPECIAL TO
THE ROANOKE TIMES

Archives Reprint

   "The Pianist," a quietly powerful movie that seldom resorts to melodrama to elicit audience response, seems to be Roman Polanski's attempt to come to terms with at least some of the demons in his life.

    Polanski survived the Nazi occupation of Poland, but his mother did not.

    This movie chronicles the occupation's impact on Polish Jews from its outset in 1939 to the end of World War II. It's based on a memoir by concert pianist Wladyslaw Szpilman, who dodged the fate of his family and friends through luck and the courage and kindness of those who helped him. They included fellow Jews, Polish gentiles and even a German officer. However, those Samaritans were in a minority. Szpilman observed mankind at its very worst: the monstrousness of the Germans, the venality of his ghetto neighbors and the betrayal of fellow Poles.

    Polanski has made at least a couple of great movies, several good ones and some outright flops. Here, he makes optimum use of his filmmaking skills.

    Adrien Brody plays Szpilman, a concert pianist who performs on Polish radio. His Warsaw family is loving, cultured, well-off and respected.

    Then the Germans invade Poland, and the nightmare begins. Jews can only own so much money. They're forced to wear armbands. They can't walk on sidewalks, and they're subject to the humiliating whims of the invaders. Then the Germans force all of Warsaw's Jews into a section of the city that's walled off from the rest of Warsaw. Some starve, and some opportunists flourish. Szpilman plays piano in a bar. Then the trains come to take Jews by the thousands to death camps in the countryside. Szpilman is snatched out of line and saved from such a trip, but his family isn't so lucky.

    Thus begin his lonely attempts at survival. He's sheltered by a Jewish resistance group in the ghetto, helped by Poles he knew through his career before the war and endures illness, starvation and the constant terror of discovery.

    The movie doesn't portray Szpilman as a hero, however. He watches the uprising in the Warsaw ghetto and the guerrilla raids by the Polish resistance from windows. He's helped much more than he helps others, and those who help him risk certain death if they're discovered. However, Szpilman is the caretaker of something beautiful amid all the ugliness: his talent. And it ultimately saves his life.

    By using Szpilman as a lens, Polanski is able to capture the sheer surrealistic horror that the Nazis created. Such evil still - and will always - defy understanding, but stories such as Szpilman's give hope because they prove that it can be survived by gentle pianists and ultimately vanquished.

    The Pianist

    HHHH 1/2

    At the Grandin Theatre. Rated R for violence. Two and a half hours

Let any elected or appointed official know what you think and how you feel by CLICKING HERE.