The Pianist
Today I was finally able to watch this movie after wanting to watch it for around 3 years now, and oh my god it was even better than I imagined. Looking at the cinematography, it’s a very blunt and cold movie, greatly matching the horrid and cold events of World War 2. Throughout most of the film, except for the very end and very beginning, it seems there’s just so much anguish and sadness in all the characters. This was a terrifying time for so many people, and this movie does a great job at capturing that. And, one thing I noticed is how, towards the end of the movie, Władysław Szpilman seems to become more desensitized to the death going on around him. He was driven to insanity by this war, and I think it’s perfect how they displayed that insanity. Looking at the plot, I like how much realism was shown in this movie. Not all the Germans were bad, some tried to help Jews. Not all the Jews had the best of intentions, some joined the police force and practically aided in the Germans’ attempts to dehumanize the Jewish people and exterminate them. This movie does what a lot of people don’t want to see in a movie: teach a lesson. It taught a lesson about how some men will let their vile and selfish tendencies take control of them and what follows as a consequence. And we cannot just forget these things, albeit the comfort forgetting tends to bring, because if we do forget what happened it may happen again, and that should be enough of a horrible thought for anyone. What this film also shows, however, is the human spirit and determination to survive. Szpilman had pretty much everything against him, a whole country out to kill him, yet he kept going. Time and time again he faces near death, yet he keeps going. This is just so powerful, it’s something I love to see represented in film. Honestly I can go into specifics about what really stood out to me in this movie, especially the piano scene towards the end, but I don’t want to make this too long so I’ll share one more thing. What makes this movie so special, like a cherry on top, and I only learned this at the end of the film so it was like a nice ribbon to wrap everything up, was that this was based on a true story. Władysław Szpilman Is a real man, a real pianist, and actually did survive the holocaust. This movie is beautiful, tragic but beautiful. If you’re interested in this period of time, or just need a really good movie to watch, I highly recommend this one.