Music in his head and a will to survive sustain Wladyslaw Szpilman (Adrien Brody) amid German persecution during the Holocaust.

Pianist’s key to survival
The Pianist

Stars Adrien Brody, Thomas Kretschmann, Frank Finlay, Maureen Lipman and Ed Stoppard. Rated MA.

Reviewer :: PTE Simone Heyer

DO YOU love anything so much that it could bring you through the most difficult time in the lives of you and your family?

Wladyslaw Szpilman loved music, the sound that his fingers made on piano keys coursed through his body like blood.

Based on a true story, The Pianist takes you to Nazi-controlled Poland and looks at the life of Szpilman (Brody) and his family of Polish Jews.

Scene one shows Szpilman playing the piano live to air, while the radio station is being bombed – the people he sees during this stage will later help him when he is persecuted.

The family experience changing laws forcing them to wear armbands, preventing them from walking on the sidewalk and eventually forcing them from their spacious home into a ghetto set aside for Jews.

Because of his name as a composer and player in the Polish community, Szpilman gets his family work permits that help them stay together until the trip on the one-way train.

It is here that a guard grabs him from the rabble heading for the carriages and pushes him behind the police lines.
He is saved, but for what? His family, friends and community have gone; all that he has is the music in his head and a will to survive.

After joining a work party, he gains the trust of their German guards and manages to avoid indiscriminate singling out, being shot and random thrashings. Using this to his advantage he makes good his escape and begins his life on the other side of the wall.

Locked in apartments for his own safety, Szpilman’s greatest torture is having a piano in his lounge, but not being able to play it to wile away the hours of nothingness.

When Poland is being repatriated by the Russians, he moves from building to building, scrounging food and looking for warmth. He finds refuge in an abandoned mansion, which, the day after becomes a German headquarters. It is there that he finds what he craves most, food and music.

Szpilman – appropriately named, his surname means “play man” in German – lives on to entertain his people for years after.

The Pianist picked up three Academy Awards this year: best actor, best adapted screenplay and best director – Roman Polanksi.
Polanski experienced war-torn Poland as a child, which perhaps gave him better insight into direction.