FREE ON CINEGEEK.DE Roman Polanski - The Pianist 

The pianist, that sounds simple. Almost too modest, because it tells the story of a Polish Jew who works as a classical pianist and survives the Nazi siege with a lot of luck and stoicism. It never creates false tension, never arouses false feelings. The Pianist tells the story of what happened back then. The Pianist is witness to what he himself saw. He survived - but not as a hero. What kind of victory would it be if everyone we love died? Roman Polanski doesn't often give interviews. But in one you can read that his mother's death in the German gas chamber was so terrible for him that only his own death will bring redemption. The pianist is Wladyslaw Szpilman and he plays Chopin in Warsaw - while the first German bombs fall. "I'm not going anywhere," was Szpilman's reaction. His family believes that the Germans will lose the war quite soon. Soon life would be back to normal. But that does not happen. All Warsaw Jews are forced to move to the cramped ghetto. Once we see the brick wall that closes off the ghetto. Only the Germans (and the American president) love walls so much. The long and unbelievable story follows of how Szpilman survives the war. He is embodied by Adrien Brody, who was not yet known as a world star at the time. Hager he seems. He is a thoroughbred musician, but not a man who is in the middle of life. You can tell that he has always kept his distance from people. In war he may seem optimistic. But that would be a fallacy. He just can't believe that it could end badly for someone like him who plays the piano so well. Roman Polanski also survived the Holocaust. On wikipedia you can read that his father pushed him through the wire barrier. Polanski survived - as accidentally as Szpilman did. Who knows, probably only luck and coincidence counted back then? For the first time since the early 60s, since his very first film, Polanski shot in Poland (and in Babelsberg!). You see the famous Babelsberg Street - where Szpilman is hidden from the Germans. There he waits, lonely, hungry, completely frightened. Then a German bomb falls and the running water does not work anymore... In the middle of the ruins is a piano. But he does not dare to play it. Then again a coincidence. The German commander Wilm Hosenfeld (Thomas Kretschmann) finds Szpilman's hiding place. Without betraying what happens, you will realize in this scene why hardly any other director achieves Polanski's skill! Survival stories in the Holocaust distort in themselves what happened back then: almost all Jews were killed. The survivors are crass exceptions. One may assume that these exceptions saved themselves through courage or audacity. But that would be nothing more than a cheap Hollywood message. The decisive point: Most of them could not do it at all! In the Nazi system they are not allowed to make a moral decision at all. Polanski is Szpilman and he knows that he survived only by luck and the kindness of some fellow citizens. But it could just as well have turned out differently. And his mother died - leaving a wound that never heals. Polanski's Szpilman is no hero and his survival is no triumph. And so you stay sitting for quite a while after the credits roll and tears roll down your face.