26 / The Pianist / Roman Polanski

I really feel like I should have seen more of Roman Polanski's work but the only film I'd seen before watching The Pianist was Repulsion, which is an absolutely spectacular little film. A very different film to The Pianistthough. Whereas Repulsion is a very small film about the interior life of one woman falling apart, The Pianist is a very big film about a man desperately trying to survive as his exterior live falls apart. I kind of went into this film expecting a very heavy and depressing look at the Holocaust which is how the film starts. A lot of characters are established and we're taken through the beginnings of the Jews persecution, being moved into the ghettos and brutally slaughtered, but by the time the first act ends most of these characters have gone and we are left with Wladyslaw, our lonely pianist. This for me is when the film really gets going. Adrien Brody's performance as Wladyslaw is so perfect. He manages to capture the quiet sadness of a man lost in a war separated from his family. It would have been so easy to overplay that role and ruin the whole film with some hammy performance, but he plays it with such quiet dignity and hope. I think that's he thing I wasn't expecting from this film. It's filled with such hope. It's such a beautiful portrait of how humanity manages to prevail through all circumstances. It manages to show how just the act of pretending to play on a piano in a bombed out room is enough to keep the human spirit alive. It spook to me of the power of art to save the human spirit. Never once does Wladyslaw's soul falter because he has the music of hope in his mind. Music that in the end saves him in more ways than one.