Not your usual Hollywood Holocaust
Roman Polanski's Palme d'Or-winning film about the Warsaw Ghetto is one that certainly deserves to get a wide audience. It is based on the autobiography of Polish pianist Wladyslaw Szpilman, who was one of the twenty Jewish residents (from a starting point of 360,000) of the capital to survive the holocaust.
The film begins when Szpilman, played by Adrien Brody, is interrupted while recording a Chopin concert for state radio - the Nazi invasion has begun. We see his family at home wondering what to do next. The men have been called up to defend the country and are frantically packing, but they don't all want to go. Meanwhile, the first Nazi laws have been published by the city's new leader, one Dr. Fischer, filling pages of newsprint. Where should the money be hidden? Does one have to sew the regulation star-of-David armbands themselves or can they be bought? Where can one go for a coffee? On what bench may one sit? Where will the money come from to get something to eat? And then the Ghetto.
The middle-class family have to move, and have to take a step down the social ladder - their new flat is not exactly what they were used to, but is "better than expected". Wladislaw and his brother (we don't find out what he did before) try to earn some kind a living through selling second-hand paperbacks, but unsurprisingly it doesn't provide their family with many zloty. Then it begins to get political - the brothers are asked to join the newly-formed Jewish police force, but send the old family friend away with a torrent of abuse.
It's also "just like outside" for Wladislaw, when he gets a job as a pianist in a cafe, where only the bourgeois of the Ghetto are allowed in. Fat, rich businessmen live the life of Riley while the vast majority are in poverty, and some literally starve on the streets, fighting each other for a bowl of soup. A class society like any other.
When the pianist's sister tries to come in to tell Wladislaw of her other brother's arrest, she is first turned away by the doorman. The brother is let out - even without a bribe - because they knew the head policeman. And this connection helps again later, when the family is rounded up for deportation in August 1942, Wladislaw is pulled away and advised to scram - "walk, don't run". Later he finds employment as a labourer and we first see evidence of a growing resistance. Gradually the Ghettoers manage to arm themselves, and Spzilman flees the ghetto, being hidden by various people, not all of whom can be well-trusted, in a number of empty flats. From a window he watches the Ghetto Uprising.
In August '44, after a insurrection in the street he was living in, directly opposite the Nazi police HQ and the military hospital, he was forced to go on the run yet again, and hides in the loft of a mansion. After a short time, Szpilman is discovered by a Nazi officer, Wilm Hosenfeld, who sees that the war is basically over and that another dead Jew won't change much. Hosenfeld provides Szpilman with food until the Russians enter that part of town.
The Pianist shows the daily brutality of fascism and the sadism of Nazi rule towards the Jews in particular. I experienced repeated feelings of disgust towards the Nazis. But at the same time there is hope, from the family printing an illegal socialist newssheet in their flat - later Szpilman finds them all shot dead in their yard -, to the discussions by those being rounded up, and the Ghetto Uprising itself, even if only shown briefly through the method of Szpilman watching some of it from his safe-house window. It *is* worth fighting back, even amongst the dirt there is always humanity, without being too sentimental about it. And, at a different level, theres the music (Chopin, Bach, Beethoven) too, and even some moments of humour.
A non-political friend of mine who saw The Pianist recently said she would now go on anti-nazi demonstrations. While that's not exactly the way to smash fascism before it gets out of control again, let alone to being in a position where it can wreak such destruction for the working class and the entire human race as in the 1930s and '40s, it's a start I suppose. And that's in a city (Berlin) where Nazi marches are so common they are barely newsworthy. If The Pianist can help increase a class-based resistance to the growing threat of the far-right, that will be a welcome side affect to what in any case is a movie worth seeing.
Matt Heaney
On the history of the Warsaw Ghetto and the Uprising, see elsewhere on www.workersliberty.org
Link: The Pianist Official Website
Score: 7/10
Reviewer: Matt Heaney
