Written by: Safal Gautam - 22019, Grade XI
Posted on: 08 February, 2021
An idea that often comes to one individual's mind after hearing the topic is either WW1 or WW2. Everyone has either read or heard about World Wars. We all know about who started the war or why was it started or its effects, pros, and cons, etc. What we don't know is what must have happened to the people during that era. About the internal strife, the public was facing rather than the so-called bits and pieces of information regarding the battlefield. Coming to the point, The Pianist is a 2002 biographical war drama film that was produced and directed by Roman Polanski. This story revolves around a famous Jewish composer and pianist, Władysław Szpilman. The movie is based upon his life story from when WW2 started and ended.
Starring Adrien Brody as the main character in the film, this movie tells us about how the Jewish people in Warsaw, specifically around Poland were the targets of persecution and merciless killings of Germans. Getting moved from one area to another, the Polish Jewish, in the name of sending them to their own private area were slowly thinned out from a population of 1 million to nearly only 50-60 thousand or even less by the time the war ended. Reasons have not been stated but it is believed that Hitler was a believer in Antisemitism, which is hostility to, prejudice, or discrimination against Jews, which stirred the mass killing of the Jewish. Having been closed off to a small area that was only enough to accommodate around 100 Jews, the pianist did not have any sort of adequate services or needs fulfilled for his family. Jewish dying from hunger, the Germans killing them just for fun or new years while recording it with a camera, children and old people getting beaten to death, crimes, civil war, suicides, all sorts of things that a human does when they are pushed to their limits has been shown in the movie. It even shows that there are good and bad people, no matter what their origins or race is.
The movie has the right blend of comedy, emotion, sadness, joy mixed in it in perfect harmony, with the mind-blowing performances from the main character, which holds us throughout the movie. It tells us how the main character was able to remain sane even after facing all those things that happened to him and his family, how he kept a stronghold on the will to live, and how he managed to survive for 6 whole years of hiding, running and always being suppressed by the Germans and his own fear for death. All in all, it is a must-watch movie for those who are interested in historical, drama, or war genres.
