Actors - The Pianist

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	Actors - The Pianist

The Pianist is a 2002 film directed by Roman Polański starring Adrien Brody. The film was adapted from the memoir of Jewish-Polish musician Władysław Szpilman. In 2002 the film won Palme d'Or in Cannes Film Festival. In 2003 the film won three Academy Awards, including Best Director for Roman Polański and Best Actor for Adrien Brody.

Tagline: Music was his passion. Survival was his masterpiece.

Plot summary

Władysław Szpilman, a famous Polish Jewish pianist working for the Warsaw radio, sees his whole world collapse with the outbreak of World War II and the invasion of Poland. The year is 1939 and the nightmare was just beginning...after the radio station at which he was working is rocked by explosions, Szpilman goes home to learn on the radio that Great Britain has declared war on Germany. Believing that the war will end quickly, he and his family rejoice at this news and wonder when all of this would be over.

Years go by and living conditions for the Jewish people gradually deteriorate as their rights are slowly eroded: they now have a limited amount of money permitted per family, armbands to identify themselves, and eventually, late in 1941, they are all forced into the Warsaw Ghetto. There, they face hunger, humiliation from the Nazis and the ever present fear of death or torture. Before long, they were rounded up to be deported to concentration camps. At the last moment, Szpilman is saved from this gruesome fate by a family friend. Now, separated from his family and loved ones, he survives, at first in the Ghetto as a slave laborer for German reconstruction units and later outside, relying on the help of non-Jews who still remember him.

When living in hiding, he witnesses many horrors committed by the Nazis such as widespread killing, beating, burning etc. In one memorable scene he witnesses the Uprising by the Jews from the Ghetto. In the end the Germans manage to enter the Ghetto and kill nearly all the remaining fighters.

A year goes by and life in Warsaw has further deteriorated. The Polish resistance mounts another unsuccessful Uprising against the German occupation. Warsaw was virtually levelled and depopulated as a result. On more than one occasion, Szpilman has come near to death. Now, miserable and weak, he is more likely to starve to death than to die by the weapons of the Nazis.

Searching the ruins of a bombed-out house, Szpilman tries to find something to eat. After a frantic search, he finds a can of pickled cucumbers. Unfortunately, he does not have a can-opener with which to open it. After another search, he finds some tools, a shovel and a metal pike by the fireplace, and begins to open the can. Just as he started, he finds that he is watched by a German officer. Frozen in fear, he drops the can. The German officer is named Captain Hosenfeld, and he immediately intuits that Szpilman is a Jew. He asks what he is doing, and Wladyslaw meekly answers that he is trying to find something to eat. He also says that he is a pianist, and Hosenfeld leads him to a piano and asks him to play something. In a moving scene, we see the decrepit Szpilman, only a shadow of the flamboyant pianist he once was, perform Chopin's despairing "Ballade in G minor" before a surprising empathetic Hosenfeld. After finishing the piece, he hides in the attic of the building. Hosenfeld regularly brings him food so he can survive. Szpilman cannot believe his luck.

Another few weeks go by, and the Germans are forced to withdraw from Warsaw due to the advancing Red Army troops. Hosenfeld gives Szpilman his coat and leaves with his company. The coat nearly proves to be fatal for Szpilman when Soviet troops, liberating what remains of Warsaw, mistake him for a German officer and shoot at him. He is able to convince them that he is Polish and they stop shooting. When harshly asked why he's wearing a German officer's coat, the haggard Szpilman simply replies, "I'm cold."

A nearby concentration camp is liberated, however, Captain Hosenfeld and other Germans were captured before they can flee. Hosenfeld begs a Jewish musician to contact Szpilman to free him. Szpilman, who has gone back to playing live on Warsaw radio, arrives at the site too late; all the prisoners have been removed along with any trace of the stockade. In the movie's final scene, Szpilman triumphantly performs Chopin's "Grand Polonaise brillante in E flat major" to a large audience in Warsaw. Title cards shown just before the end credits tell us that Szpilman died in 2000 and Hosenfeld in 1952 in a Soviet prisoner of war camp.

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