Oscar’s Latest Holocaust-Based Winner Is A Draining Yet Satisfying Journey

“I try to get away from the Oscars, but they keep pulling me back in!” (My apologies to Pacino.) Just when you thought you’d heard the last from me about the Academy Awards for a while, I’m back with another column about the annual Tinseltown show.

Actually, this column is less about the Oscars than it is motivated by them: the two biggest shocks of the night (aside from Michael Moore being booed off the stage) belonged to Adrien Brody, who won the Best Actor trophy over front-runners Daniel Day-Lewis and Jack Nicholson (and captured all the headlines with his spontaneous, onstage smooch of Halle Berry), and Roman Polanski, who upset veteran Martin Scorsese and newcomer Rob Marshall to nab the award for Best Director. Both Brody and Polanski triumphed for their work on The Pianist, which subsequently edged its way back among the top ten movies in the country last week, so it makes sense to take a longer look at this award-winning film.

Now playing at Bethel Cinema and other theaters in the area, The Pianist is based on a true story (it also won an Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay) and follows the journey of the acclaimed Polish composer and pianist, Wladyslaw Szpilman (Brody), who struggled to stay alive during World War II when the Nazis invaded Poland.

Szpilman apparently played the last live music heard over Polish radio airwaves before Nazi artillery hit the area (this is where the film opens) and director Polanski begins the film with a still sense of foreboding as Szpilman and his family speculate on just how bad things may or may not become as soldiers file into the city (whereas we as viewers know unfortunately how bad things will become). Before long, their possessions are taken away and they are herded into a small section of Warsaw that is turned into a Jewish ghetto. Eventually Szpilman is separated from his family and is forced to try to survive on his own.

It is interesting to compare The Pianist to other recent Oscar-winning Holocaust films, such as Schindler’s List and Life is Beautiful. Whereas Schindler’s List had an epic, sweepingly emotional aspect to it that was balanced by its black-and-white photography (which in turn brought a stark realism to the piece) and Life is Beautiful juxtaposed the horror of the Holocaust (mostly unseen but keenly felt) with the whimsy of its lead character, played by Roberto Benigni, The Pianist is a fairly quiet, intimate picture that becomes something of an emotional endurance test for the audience as the film grows increasingly focused on the physical and spiritual trials that Szpilman undergoes.

Brody embodies the role by becoming more and more emaciated as the film progresses, but his performance encompasses more than simply losing weight for the part: his soulful gaze keenly captures the sapping away of Szpilman’s very essence yet at the same time reminds us of the humanity within the artist that refuses to completely give up despite days without water, weeks without food, and seeming eternities without human interaction. It becomes difficult for us, as viewers, to watch him waste away before us as he scratches to survive in the war-torn remains and rubble of Warsaw, but perhaps that’s Polanski’s point.

Though the director doesn’t shy away from showing us some of the brutalities of that time (ie, the casualness at which people where randomly lined up and shot, the hording away of numbers of Jews to death camps), this film is actually about the long, oft thorny path of simple survival and we’re shown an incredible journey in the providences that helped Szpilman travel that road.

The Pianist, rated R for violence and language, is an emotionally draining, but ultimately rewarding and enlightening film.