At the outbreak of World War II, Warsaw, the capital of Poland was one of the first targets of the German Luftwaffe, and shortly thereafter the city was put under siege.
Of Poland’s 3.5 million Jewish people, 360,000 — workers, artisans and professionals lived in Warsaw, and represented approximately one third of the population.
In rapid succession, the Jewish were forced to wear armbands with the Star of David, had their personal belongings and residences confiscated and were forbidden to use public parks, sit on benches or walk on sidewalks.
At the conclusion of the war the entire area of the “ghetto” in Warsaw was leveled and, when the Germans retreated, there were only 20 Jewish people left in the city.
Roman Polanski’s latest film, The Pianist, is the story of Wladyslaw Szpilman, a promising composer and virtuoso pianist who had enjoyed genuine celebrity in his homeland.
Aside from the 300,000 Jewish people that were deported to concentration camps in Poland, Szpilman narrowly escaped deportation and was forced to live in the heart of the Warsaw ghetto where he experienced the humiliation, the suffering and the struggles of a hated minority during the war.
After long periods of hiding he managed to escape and hide in the ruins of the capital. After the war ended he wrote Death of a City, memoirs of his experiences published in 1946 and from which a movie was based.
War has long been a popular setting for the media of film. Hollywood portrayals of the Civil War, World War I and II and Vietnam have for years given Americans a glimpse of the sufferings of humanity, the horrors of war and the scorched, blood-soaked earth that comes as a result.
Unless they have ever been in the midst of war, movie-goers are usually on the outside looking in. War dramas have a way at getting at our moral consciences while they deeply explore the nature of man in settings of pain, suffering and uncertainty.
At the start of the film we see Szpilman playing Chopin’s “Nocturne in C Sharp Minor” live on Polish radio, while the first Nazi bombs were raining down on Warsaw in September 1939. The deafening loudness of the bombs silenced the music.
The Polish radio station was bombed, and it would be another six years before it heard music again.
The Pianist is a truly personal and startlingly realistic portrayal of the Holocaust.
Adrien Brody delivers an impeccable performance in the film, playing Szpilman, the Polish pianist who, in the face of death survived against all odds.
Its focus on one solitary man’s vividly horrifying experiences and documentary-like way of replaying events extends the audiences ability to feel compassion for the character and those around him.
As powerful as the quiet scenes of Tom Hanks in Cast Away gave movie-goers a look into another mans journey, so was Wladyslaw Szpilman’s experience of the holocaust in The Pianist.
We see the events unfold before Szpilman’s eyes and in the process the audience in entirely drawn in. The violent details of the film are intense and seem to be almost as difficult to watch as those in Spielberg’s Schindler’s List.
For much of the film Szpilman is painfully and utterly alone, his family and friends gone and the Jewish population of Warsaw dwindling at a rapid rate.
Through all of this external madness he deals with his own inner turmoil and struggles to survive, though it is not always clear what for, hiding in any place he can luckily avoid death’s quick and final grasp.
There is oftentimes much more power in following the experience of a single human being than in witnessing masses of nameless individuals experience different things.
In The Pianist, the audience follows one man, and in the relationship that ensues a powerful connection is forged between the audience and the story. You feel pangs of horror, contemplation and sympathy during the silent pauses of Wladyslaw’s solitary escape.
Before, his piano had given him music. But it had become a noise-making instrument that could have caused him to be discovered and killed. The music that he made had previously given him peace of mind, now peace of mind came from the silence that he was hiding in.
In The Pianist, Roman Polanski powerfully illustrates the true story of the brilliant Polish pianist, Wladyslaw Szpilman, who lived and survived the Nazi occupation of Poland in World War II, and in doing so has created a near-masterpiece of a film.

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