By EWAN McDONALD
The Pianist is a true story. Or more correctly, two true stories: that of Wladyslaw Szpilman, a gifted Jewish musician who grew up in Warsaw in the 30s and wrote the autobiography on which the movie is based; and of Roman Polanski, the gifted, flawed director whose experiences
during the war were similar to Szpilman's.
So this winner of the Cannes Palme d'Or, the Bafta for best picture and three Oscars begins with Szpilman (Adrien Brody) somewhat predictably playing Chopin in a Warsaw concert-radio studio in 1939 as the Germans invade Poland.
The pianist lives in an upper-middle-class neighbourhood with his large family: mother (Maureen Lipman), father (Frank Finlay), brother Henryk (Ed Stoppard) and sisters.
As he flees the first bombing he meets a cellist, Dorota (Emilia Fox). The fledgling relationship is doomed by different faiths and the Nazi restrictions on Jews moving about the city.
Within a few months the family is herded into the ghetto and will be shipped to concentration camps. Szpilman is saved by his family's money and his fame, two strands that will rescue him over the next six years.
He makes a daring escape that will take him from one refuge to another. He will endure hardship, graphically portrayed by the film-maker, but he will be the "lucky one". He will live. Well, survive.
Brody's withdrawn performance is masterful, at one step removed from the horrors around him. Polanski, who spent part of his childhood in Poland during the war and escaped from the Krakow ghetto through a hole in a barbed wire fence at the age of 7, draws on those ghastly memories.
German officers throw an old man from his wheelchair over a balcony for not standing when they enter a room. Soldiers shoot Jews in the street and drive over the bodies.
Some may quibble that there are too many echoes of Schindler's List, down to the colour draining away to black-and-white tones, or that the screenwriter cannot sustain the 21/2 hours, and both points are valid. But there is no denying, the film's power and honesty.
DVD features: movie (150min); A Story of Survival documentary.
Released: August 6
